Bebel Giberto: return of the bossa Queen

Let’s see: on the day Venus provided an astronomical event not occurring in 120 years and someone offering more positive proof that Atlantis had existed near Cadiz in southern Spain and wasn’t a figment of Plato’s imagination but destroyed by floods between 800BC and 500BC, the media was only focused on J-Lo’s attempt of competing with Elizabeth Taylor’s hubby-numbers. And, the killing images flicker constantly on news-channels… Culture is the latest TV-reality crapolla… Pop music is the new comedy series…

The world in a state is to what Bebel Gilberto comes back to with her new album, ‘Bebel’ Gilberto’, four years from her mega-successful debut, ‘Tanto Tempo’. Let’s refresh your celeb-trivia clogged memory: Bebel is the daughter of João Gilberto, the creator of bossa nova and the man behind ‘The Girl From Ipanema’, known in Brazil as, simply, ‘The Legend’; her mother, Miúcha Buarque de Hollanda, is a well known singer and her uncle Chico Buarque is one of Brazil’s first pop stars. And, her step mum is one Astrud Gilberto.

With such lineage you can only expect goodies and you get them… generally. No, there are no weak songs here although there is also little progression from the previous disc. But, bossa nova, mamba and most Latino rhythms are less forgiving then other genres of popular music… There are attempts though: the opening ‘Simplesmente’ is given multi-layered lustre by Madonna/Björk/Annie Lennox’s producer Marius de Vries, as is the following ‘Aganjú’ on which her mother provides backing vocals.

‘Bebel’ sounds more Brazilian than ‘Tanto Tempo’; its opening track ‘Baby’, written by Caetano Veloso in the late 1960s, concerns America's curious influence on smart young Brazilians. Brilliant and eccentric songwriter-percussionist Carlinhos Brown contributes two tunes permeated with tropical knowledge.

Bebel wrote or co-wrote nine songs reflecting a four-year period of hard work and intense soul searching. And, by this account, it wasn’t such a happy time, after all, ‘BG’ being a more downbeat disc than its predecessor - the album is also informed by a broken love affair… It is a poignant, mostly acoustic work that shimmers with Brazilian percussion; unless taste has achieved its Yungian ‘enantiodromia’ phase, ‘Bebel’ should become the feel-bad hit of the summer.

This predominantly organic album works the best when Ms Gilberto sings in her native tongue; songs with English lyrics tend to be less impressive and not because she doesn’t handle/can’t-project/accentuate but because the lyrics are not the greatest. Portuguese, for non-speakers, allows to simply glide on her timbre, warmth, inflection, mellifluous tunes beguiling you…

I gotta have a power-nap, this has drained me…

7/10
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Live date:

Fri 16 July - Somerset House, London [Tix: £23]