You hear the flick of the switch before a reed organ starts playing a chord that will play for about 90 seconds. A faintly strummed mandolin, reversed guitar chords, and some less easily identified ambience enters the fray before disappearing and giving way to hypnotic acoustic guitar strums. An artist known as bruxa do mangue sings a song of deep loneliness.
It's a bold and sad way to open an album, but with o nascer do sol it's perfect. That title, according to Google Translate at least, means "sunrise" in Portuguese. The idea behind the title would not occur to me until reaching the end of the album and reflecting back on what I'd just heard.
There's a story here. While the first two tracks are downbeat expressions of pathos and sadness, the third track, an instrumental title track, is the point of sunrise. The point where love manifests and changes the tone of the album entirely.
This isn't an album of six individual songs as much as it is one continuous and coherent work designed to be listened to in one sitting. The early tracks, often alternating between two chords indefinitely, where vocals are few and far between, are so atmospheric and emotional. I particularly love longa tempestade, which sounds like it's being played by a folk band in a church at 1am. The post-sunrise tracks still might alternate between two chords, but there's a lot more space to them. They sound lighter and brighter. The sense of an intense, almost obsessive love is clearest in the aptly titled closer, beloved.
Art is about expression and what truer things to express than loneliness, hope, and love? This is a deeply romantic album, and one that I've really enjoyed listening to.