What I love about so many Brazilian MPB veterans is that they still care about being progressively artistic, where European and American veterans usually just retire with a folky acoustic guitar. Take Marcos Valle’s brilliant comeback in recent years, for example.
Alexandre Kassin is of a younger generation, he’s 44, but he will make these albums for another 30 years, just like Veloso, Gilberto, Jobim. His recently released new album ‘Relax’ tells exactly this story: natural, epic and thrilling MPB, still wild and wide-eyed, still playful with the inherited sophistication, still reaching for the sky when it comes to chords, melodies and careful, nerdy arrangements.
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