Gal Costa: Gal Costa (1969) [VAMPI SOUL]

Why you'll love it

Vampi Soul has Gal Costa's first solo album back on vinyl. Rolling Stone Brasil ranked it among the 100 best Brazilian albums ever made, and Pitchfork put it on its list of the 200 best albums of the 1960s.

This edition

• Vampi Soul reissue (cat# VAMPI344LP)
• The original 12-song running order
• Songs by Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Jorge Ben and Tom Zé

About the album

Two years earlier Gal Costa had made Domingo with Caetano Veloso, a gentle bossa nova record that gave little hint of what was coming. Then came tropicália, the movement that took Brazilian song, psychedelic rock and a good deal of nerve and stirred them together, and Costa sang on its manifesto album, Tropicália: ou Panis et Circencis. By the time she made this one for Philips with producer Manoel Barenbein, she had become its most daring voice.

The songs come from her friends, and what friends. Veloso wrote "Não Identificado," "Lost in the Paradise" and "Baby," which she turns into something tender and strange; Veloso and Gilberto Gil gave her "Divino, Maravilhoso"; Jorge Ben supplied "Que Pena"; Tom Zé wrote "Namorinho de Portão." The arrangements are pure late-60s psychedelia, and underneath it all you can still hear the bossa nova singer, keeping the phrasing cool while the band goes slightly off its head.

Pitchfork said she "veils hers in gauzy melodies and bossa nova-indebted vocals," which is a lovely way of describing a voice that could stop a room. If you have only one tropicália record, start here; you will not have only one for long.

Tracklist

Listen

On Vampi Soul (cat# VAMPI344LP), a reissue of the 1969 album.