The World Cup may have ended for Brazil this year in the round of 16, but that need not be any reason for mourning. At least one can keep cheering on Novos Baianos F.C., as often as one likes. The band Novos Baianos were indeed seriously football-mad in 1973, when they recorded the album. One should not necessarily expect stadium hymns, though, but rather música popular brasileira from an openly playful side.
The musicians had no fear of contact with either rock or folk, and mixed their interests quite uninhibitedly, sometimes in direct alternation in the middle of a song. Where, just a moment earlier, acoustic guitar and discreetly complex percussion could be heard, electrically distorted strings accompanied by energetic drums might enter the picture the next. Most of the pieces, however, are rather homogeneous; the gentle sounds predominate. Among Novos Baianos’ strengths are amiably scruffy numbers with that introspective streak sometimes present in Brazilian music, even when the rhythm may be syncopatedly worked up alongside it. Novos Baianos, incidentally, had a hippie image at the time, whatever that is supposed to mean in concrete terms. In any case, these hippies knew how to write intelligent songs and deliver them convincingly.
