Os Mutantes – “Haih or Amortecedor” (2009)
This review by Joe Tangari from comes the Pitchfork Media website (Sept. 2, 2009). This is Brazilian legends Os Mutantes’ first album since the 70s and it’s good to see them back in action. Their early albums from the late 60s are very interesting, diverse, groundbreaking efforts – highly recommended…
Os Mutantes were the kids of the Tropicália movement. Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Tom Zé, Rogerio Duprat, Gal Costa, and the others weren’t exactly oldsters themselves during the movement’s brief heyday, but they all carried themselves with a degree of seriousness and projected themselves as artists in a way Rita Lee and brothers Sérgio Dias and Arnaldo Baptista never did and perhaps even couldn’t. The trio that named itself the Mutants attacked rock’n’roll with rebellious, gleeful abandon, using homemade effects pedals and layering on wacky sound effects to cover up the bits of their songs the Brazilian military censors found most offensive. Their five albums together still sound vital and exciting today, but Lee left in 1972 and the brothers – and ultimately just Sérgio Dias – carried on until 1978.
That period of Os Mutantes isn’t well-known outside of Brazil, but suffice to say it hasn’t aged as well. They were as prone to prog excess as any psych band that survived past 1970, and though their music retained its wild spirit and Brazilian character, it also got tighter, more bombastic, and less infectious. Their last studio album came out 35 years ago, and Os Mutantes were a memory until 2006, when Baptista and Dias got back on stage with Zélia Duncan standing in for Rita Lee. Baptista and Duncan both appeared on the band’s quality 2007 live album, but both were gone by the time Haih was recorded, and Dias reached out to a couple of old Tropicália warriors, Jorge Ben and Tom Zé, for a hand writing the songs. Zé co-wrote six songs with Dias, and he proves a sympathetic partner, turning in a salad of modern imagery, biting satire, and pointed commentary for the band to sing (in Portuguese, I should add – nothing apart from bits of “Neurociência Do Amor” and “Samba do Fidel” is sung in English on this record).
The music is kaleidoscopically varied, sounding sonically like a descendant of the band’s late-period records but a little closer in spirit and vigor to their 60s output. You get manic rumba on the jokingly titled Zé co-write “Samba do Fidel,” which tackles the Western Hemisphere’s complex left-right politics through the perspective of Brazil’s social problems, slyly sprinkling in references to Carmen Miranda and American corporate imperialism with the lines “Chiquita banana I love you,” and “Yes, we have McBananas.” The brazen lampoon of sitting Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva strikingly illustrates how much easier it is to be in a Brazilian rock band today than it was from 1965 to 1978. “2000 e Agarrum” begins as pretty basic accordion-driven samba rock with a cartoonishly nasal lead vocal but swerves into a sweeping chorus, a morass of psychedelic carnival music and lounge lizard Latin pop.
There are flourishes of non-Brazilian ethnic music, including the chunky oud riffs that open “Teclar” and the Arab cabaret swagger of “Baghdad Blues,” which mixes historical stereotypes of the Middle East with imagistic anti-war commentary that never descends to accusation. New female vocalist Bia Mendes plays closer to a Rita Lee role than Zélia Duncan ever did, but she still gets in a few forceful moments – her boisterous belting on “Querida Querida” as the band rocks out behind her might even be a little too forceful, and there are passages of the song that rock too generically. The band mostly keeps the passages of boilerplate funk and rock to a minimum, though, and the most straightforward rock song on the album, “O Mensageiro” is even a little jangly – it’s what a Brazilian R.E.M. might sound like until the heavy guitar solo comes in.
The transition to that song from the Jorge Ben-penned Tropicália throwback “O Careca” is unintentionally the most jarring segue on an album well-populated with abrupt and unexpected turns. My primary complaint is that Haih could have used a more open sound – a looser approach to recording might have let some of the music’s natural wildness out to play, where it sometimes feels reigned in or stifled. Haih is just as weird as their older albums; it’s just weird in a much more polished way. All in all though, it’s good to hear a new Os Mutantes record that carries forward the ideals and exploratory spirit that made us all love the band in the first place, even if it won’t ever supplant those classic early albums.
Joe Tangari
The Beat Patrol 