This is Legião Urbana's Dois, the second album from the Brazilian band from Brasilia. I've been listening to this in the same playlist as the Chills' Submarine Bells, and realised something fairly obvious: music from the same era can sometimes sound similar. They also sound a bit like the Smiths, a bit Cure, even a bit Indochine and probably a few more bands I don't know as much about. I first heard of them about 4 years ago, when Tempo Perdido seemed to be playing quite often. I fell in love with the song, it was a different sound for me, and now that I think about it, I hadn't knowingly heard a Smiths song yet. I had left it at that but the next time I was in Brazil, I investigated a bit more and got this album.
I thought Steenbeck was brave to do a Hip Hop album a couple of weeks ago, and I was inspired to go with a non-English speaking band. However, samba this is not, the music shouldn't sound that foreign to you. Brazil has produced a lot of guitar based bands (most famous of all is probably Sepultura), like Legião or Titãs. The main points for me are the guitar and Renato Russo's voice, it can be soft, harsh, romantic, angry. I don't like it as much when they go for a rockier sound, but their more poppy numbers are a joy, albeit tinted with a certain darkness. The one thing that ages this album is the production, but once you get past that, I hope you can enjoy it. So here it is, on Spotify or in the dropbox.
