Rodrigo Amarante

You may know Rodrigo Amarante already. You may have heard “Tuyo,” his theme tune to the Netflix drama Narcos, or the Little Joy album, recorded with Fab Moretti and Binki Shapiro, maybe you’ve seen his name among the credits on songs by Gal Costa, Norah Jones and Gilberto Gil; or perhaps you saw him play live with Brazilian samba big band Orquestra Imperial, or with Rio rockers Los Hermanos; you should have heard his 2014 debut album, Cavalo. You may think you know Rodrigo Amarante already, but Drama, his second solo album, is going to introduce a whole new level of confusion.

Drama is purposefully caricatural, cinematic; “As biased as memory”.  The ominous opening number gives you a hint that things might not be what they appear, and clues are hiding in plain sight. “Projection, attachment, deception: that is Drama.”. The sunny upbeat start of “Maré”, with a nearly childish opening melody, echoes something less naïf: “The tide will fetch what the ebb brings”. The beat helps you move past. “Tango” sounds like falling in love on the dance floor, warm and tropical, it celebrates companionship, while perhaps pleading for it, yearning. “Tara,” meanwhile, feels like something Astrud Gilberto might have sung at the height of bossa nova’s global popularity.