Vitto Meirelles – Da Hora (Cooking Vinyl, 2019)
If you have even the slightest affinity for Brazilian music you need a copy of Vitto Meirelles’s Da Hora, out on the Cooking Vinyl label. And, I’m not just saying that because the cover features Mr. Meirelles in the buff with just a guitar. Yes, after years of bitter complaints about CD covers exploiting women’s bodies to boost sales, we can just chalk this up to an About Time Moment. Regardless of the cheesecake photo connotations, Mr. Meirelles has crafted a first rate recording that is a smart, savvy and satiny follow-up to previous recordings Da Fonte and Vem Rei.
Conjuring up an airy and intimate feel on Da Hora, singer, composer and musician Mr. Meirelles enlists percussionists Domenico Lancellotti, Marivaldo Paim, Carlos Sales and Pedro Fonte in addition to his own playing guitar, piano, bass and electric keyboard to weave this silky smooth Brazilian musicscape. Mr. Meirelles’s past work with the like of Gilberto Gil, Salif Keita and Seu Jorge and composing for film and theater serves him well on Da Hora in crafting engaging tracks and moods.
Opening with the “A Fonte Secou” featuring Denis Lavant, listeners are teased with flirty bit of opening accordion before riding the easy, breezy vocals of Mr. Meirelles and some delicious percussion dashed with a bit of cuica.
Lazing his way into “Nada E melhor do Que Voce,” listeners are lulled by backing Brazilian drumming, guitar and keyboards against Mr. Meilleres’s vocals before giving way to sections of just percussion and vocals.
Full of interesting turns of vocal phrasing and percussion, Da Hora transforms what might have been ordinary Brazilian fare into something extraordinary. Equally delicious are servings of “Outro Ceu,” the savvy swinging “Le Cannibale,” “Um Tempo ao Tempo,” the delicately worked “Tudo Era Leve” and the faint vocal backing of easy feeling “O Amor E Tudo.”
Title track “Da Hora” is indeed a standout track, along with “Sou Menina Menino” and the bonus tracks “Tu T’laisses Aller” and “Aguas de Marco.”
Da Hora’s warm intimate feel is dreamy drowsy laze steeped in Brazil, and we all know if Brazilian music is playing then all is right with the world. And hey, there’s a naked man with a guitar on the cover.
Buy Da Hora
Author: TJ Nelson
TJ Nelson is a regular CD reviewer and editor at World Music Central. She is also a fiction writer. Check out her latest book, Chasing Athena’s Shadow. Set in Pineboro, North Carolina, Chasing Athena’s Shadow follows the adventures of Grace, an adult literacy teacher, as she seeks to solve a long forgotten family mystery. Her charmingly dysfunctional family is of little help in her quest. Along with her best friends, an attractive Mexican teacher and an amiable gay chef, Grace must find the one fading memory that holds the key to why Grace’s great-grandmother, Athena, shot her husband on the courthouse steps in 1931. Traversing the line between the Old South and New South, Grace will have to dig into the past to uncover Athena’s true crime.