Vagarosa

It's been four years since Céu released her first solo album in Brazil – enough time for her to have developed an underground following in her native São Paulo and attracted mainstream attention abroad which led to nominations for Latin Grammys and then the Grammys themselves. It's also clearly given her time to forge musical relationships with some of the avant–garde talents drawn to the musical Mecca that is São Paulo, and write some great new material. For whilst her debut was thoughtful and quirky with some delightful moments, Vagarosa is altogether more mature in both breadth and mood.

The album is a window on modern São Paulo. This is a city that consumes the world's cultures voraciously – but without understanding more than a smattering of English, and encountering it third–hand through the internet and a tireless media. It's a city that has become the centre of art and culture in Latin America but which (uniquely for that continent) is not ethnically Latin – it's made up of Japanese, Koreans, Italians, Germans, Portuguese and Arabs who encountered Africa and indigenous nations here in the 20th century to produce a kind of Antipodean New York. Céu's music, like the best of her contemporaries, reflects this. Whilst it could only be Brazilian, it blends a world of styles together – samba, reggae, soundtracks, trip–hop, MPB and melodic pop – all played by a diverse coterie of cutting–edge session musicians (including Nação Zumbi's incomparable rhythm section of Pupillo and Dengue) and filtered through dubby, dreamy production which gives the whole a lush, laid–back groove. Céu's voice soothes and floats over all in soporific simple melodies or multi–layered harmonies. From the seductive, lilting and cooing after the opening cotinga calls on ‘Espaçonave’ to the light, 50-second mandolin samba and faux-crackly vinyl fade-out on ‘Sobre O Amor E Seu Trabalho Silencioso’, this is a wonderful album.