Céu had long dreamed of recording an album made of songs important to her, from the Brazilian and Anglo-Saxon repertoires. A need for comfort born of the pandemic gave birth to his very beautiful record Um Gosto de Solwhere she notably sings Rita Lee, Fiona Apple, Milton Nascimiento and goes through a bit of the history of samba.
Posted yesterday at 9:00 a.m.
We understood from the first bars of her first album that Céu was not a generic artist: scratching, traditional percussions, piano notes ginned by bordering on dissonance and then, after this intro of almost a minute, the acoustic guitar goes on and here she is putting her soft voice, a bit veiled, on a tune that relies as much on her Brazilian musical roots as on urban borrowings and an almost R&B feeling.
That was fifteen years ago. She has since demonstrated that she was not going to follow any well-trodden path, sometimes rooting herself more in the vast musical universe of her country, but always daring to push the boundaries by infusing it with a touch sometimes of dub, sometimes of electro. She is not the first to do it, but she is undoubtedly the one who succeeds best in this synthesis, with whom it flows naturally and, above all, who does it with constant good taste.
Last fall, Céu changed its trajectory slightly. Rather than releasing new songs of her own, she launched Um Gosto de Sola disc where she covers sambas from different eras, but also songs by Sade (Paradise), Fiona Apple (Criminal) or João Gilberto (Bim Bom). Another album where the arrangements are wildly elegant and the general tone frankly warm.
The idea of doing covers has been in Céu’s head for a while, she says, joined at her home in São Paulo, the Brazilian megalopolis. What prompted her to take the leap? A certain lack of inspiration, which is due in particular to the difficult collective life in his country. We think, even if she does not say it clearly, that she is talking about the social climate installed by President Jair Bolsonaro, Brazilian variation of Donald Trump.
I wrote some stuff, very dance and hard. I will release them one day, but what I needed during this pandemic was to go towards things that brought me calm, that could refresh my soul and my spirit. So I went back to my idols.
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She carefully selected pieces like Ao Romper da Aurora (by Ismael Silva, who opens the album beautifully), the slight Teimosa (by Antônio Carlos and Jocáfi) and Chega But (Rita Lee), of which she delivers a frankly tonic version.
Céu and her husband, Pupillo (director of the record), wanted to create a feeling of conviviality and human warmth. What the singer associates, among other things, with the comfort of a meeting of people around music and a fire. “Music is my first language, illustrates Céu. When everything goes wrong, I turn to music, it’s my compass. »
Marriage between acoustic and heavy metal
Those who have been following Céu for at least a few years will find thatUm Gosto de Sol has something more rooted than his two previous albums. Machines or synthetic sound textures are not very present. In fact, what supports the singer’s voice the most, both in the bursts of enthusiasm and in the melancholy, is an acoustic guitar. “It’s my favorite instrument,” says Céu, evoking his childhood cradled in particular by a musicologist father.
I wanted the acoustic guitar to be the center of the album and I wanted someone who had a signature. Not a classical guitarist, but a strong personality.
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Pupillo, also drummer of the rock group Nação Zumbi, thought of an acquaintance: Andreas Kisser, guitarist of the group Sepultura, an important figure in heavy metal in the 1990s.
She didn’t think for a second that he would accept. She was wrong. “He liked the idea. It gave her a purpose, she adds, it saved her from going crazy during the pandemic! Andreas Kisser was also totally invested in the project, for which he learned to play the seven-string guitar. His playing is precise, virtuoso, but always imbued with an almost physical emotion. Put your ear to Chega Butfor example.
Andreas Kisser is not on the Céu tour, he will rather be in Germany with Sepultura when the singer is in Montreal. The concert presented at Club Soda will nevertheless revolve around the acoustic guitar. “I’m in love with my current group,” says Céu. It’s more stripped down, but it seems that this stripping gives greater strength to the music. »
Céu, Monday, 9 p.m., at Club Soda