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April 10, 2010

MUSIC REVIEW | CAETANO VELOSO

Gentle Singer-Songwriter Revives His Rocking Side

By JON PARELES

At 67, Caetano Veloso still has a boyish grin, a kindly voice and mischief in his eyes. None of
them should be mistaken for mellowing with age. On Thursday night at Terminal 5, his music was
typically tuneful and smart. It was also obstinate, flinty, sometimes raunchy and laced with noise.

Mr. Veloso was a leader in Brazil’s rock revolution in the 1960s, the tropicália movement that
brought audacious electric guitars, modernist poetry and psychedelic commotion into Brazilian
pop. After many gentler metamorphoses, he is a rocker again, which must be why he performed at
Terminal 5, a rock ballroom with a standing audience, rather than his usual New York City stop,
Carnegie Hall.

He led Banda Cê, the three musicians who collaborated with him on his 2006 album, “Cê”
(Nonesuch), and his latest one, “Zii e Zie” (Nonesuch), which won a Latin Grammy Award after
its release in Brazil last year. Pedro Sá on guitar, Ricardo Dias Gomes on bass and keyboards and
Marcelo Callado on drums join Mr. Veloso in arrangements that stay austere — a few guitar
notes, a terse beat, virtually no embellishment — as if X-raying the songs.

The underlying rhythm was often a samba, but a skeletal one, and the tempos could be stubbornly
slow, deliberately withholding the lift that would come from a few more beats per minute. Every
few songs, Mr. Sá would add distortion to his lead guitar, or fling some abrasive chord against the
beat.

The concert’s strategy — defying prettiness — was telegraphed in the first song, the sardonically
cheerful “Voz do Mort” (“Voice From the Dead”). Partway through, Mr. Callado kicked up a
heavier beat, and Mr. Sá started plinking metallic dissonances on his guitar, as if a samba parade
had turned into a brawl. It was a flare-up of angular, post-punk samba.

Mr. Veloso didn’t abandon melody. He sang a few of his older ballads, like “Leaozinho” (“Little
Lion”), and the gorgeous, desolate “Por Quem?” (“For Whom?”) from “Zii et Zie.” But the backup
stayed sparse, never cushioning the words. After getting the audience singing along to his solo,
acoustic version of “Desde que o Samba Samba” (“Since Samba Is Samba”), he followed it
immediately with the jagged, insistently repetitive “Tarado ni Você” (“Horny for You”).
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Music Review - Caetano Veloso - Caetano Veloso Revives His Rock at Terminal 5 - NYTimes.com 4/12/10 11:09 AM

immediately with the jagged, insistently repetitive “Tarado ni Você” (“Horny for You”).

The concert’s harsh edges suggested a more cool-headed, grown-up epilogue to the shocks of
tropicália. Mr. Veloso returned to some songs from that era, like “Não Identificado”
(“Unidentified”) and “Maria Bethania” (which declares, in English, “Our cities were built to be
destroyed”).

His new songs are equally unsparing. “Falso Leblon” (“False Leblon”) is about an affair with a
drug-addicted girl. Mr. Veloso led a sing-along to the chorus from a 2006 rocker, “Odeio”: “I hate
you.” As usual, and with a smile, he was challenging himself and his audience to set aside old
comforts.

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