Titina Canta B Leza

With reissues of long-deleted Cape Verdean albums being about as rare as Cape Verdean cloud bursts, Astral Music in conjunction with Sterns are due a heartfelt obrigado for dusting off this late-80s nugget. A contemporary of the late Cesaria Evora and possessed with every bit as luxuriant a croon, Titina deserves equal recognition and this release certainly won’t do her profile any harm. Plenty of Cape Verdean artists have covered the songs of B Leza, the archipelago’s most acclaimed composer, but few can claim to have been mentored by him as well.

This, then, is the sound of Titina paying homage to the man on the 30th anniversary of his death, and the most striking thing about it is how much older than 1988 it sounds. Strings are laid on fairly heavily in places, though they don’t detract from an atmosphere already drowning blissfully in its own sorrows, with Paulino Vieira on cavaquinho, piano and violin, and Luis Morais blowing delicious slivers of clarinet. Though the stylistic palette flirts with Brazilian samba and even melancholy fusions of morna and fado, it’s the unadulterated morna of ‘Terra Longe’ and ‘Note de Mindelo’ that cuts deepest, as darkly romantic a sonic opiate as you’ll hear all year.