Os mutantes haih
A new album from Os Mutantes! A cause for celebration huh? I mean, this is a completely, brand spanking all-new-material... recorded over the last coupla years... what's not to get excited about, right? Well, you know how it is. Old band, once obscure find that they've been raved about unbeknown to them, they get back together, tour and then decide to make an awful blues LP because their fingers and minds aren't as quick as they once were.
However... this is Os Mutantes we're talking about here and 'Haih... or Amortecedor' is anything but an exercise in old men playing on a busy road...
It's perfectly reasonable to approach the first new Mutantes LP in over three decades with suspicion. I mean, look at the cover. It's pretty lame and looks like it took someone 10 minutes on Photoshop. Compare it to the great covers in this bands backcat, especially the bugeyed cartoons of Jardim Elétrico and Mutantes e Seus Cometas no País do Baurets.
However, if there's one thing you should know by now, is that you can't swerve an album just because it looks a bit lame... I mean... no-one woulda taken a blind bit of notice at The Band's first LP if we bought things solely for the cover.
Sergio Dias has burrowed away to make "a perfect vision of what Os Mutantes should sound like in the 21st century." He noted that it would "be awful to mimic something we had done when we were teenagers." He's got a point. However, Dias has ensured that he's not made a Latin Dadrock LP by getting two Tropicalistas on board to help out with ideas, notably Jorge Ben and the insane sonic wizard that is Tom Zé.
As such, we're left with a playful LP that, like their gig at the Barbican, starts off kinda lame and gets better and better as it goes along and actually... might be the best thing they've recorded since they dropped the 'Os' from the band name.
'Querida Querida', first track proper, is a gonzoid Mutantes cut&paste job, with backward things and distorto guitar and that trademark playfulness... however... the whole thing comes unstuck in the mix with almost metal-esque guitar and lame synthesiser-pretending-to-be-trumpets thing that blights so many comebacks.
Mercifully, it stops there as the rest of the LP remains cheeky and just the right side of experimental and sticks to making Really Weird Rock Music. Imagine the LP starts at 'Teclar' and you've got a decent comeback from a band... or rather... Sergio Dias... who is obviously unable to make an album that rolls like anyone else. There's something wired up wrong in his brain. Songs come out all... Mutantes.
Perfect example is '2000 e Agarrum' which is the weirdest cut they've made since 'Top Top', which retains that odd, Woody Woodpecker vocal, yet, somehow mixes it with some suave bossa and the nightmare fairground ride of 'Panis et Circenses'... it's fuckin' nuts. It's ace! It's the kind of record that could only be made and executed by Mutantes.
'Anagrama' is another track that feels like it fell out of the collective Mutanes mindset circa '68. It's sumptuous, languid and sprinkled in their wrong-dust, to make something that feels familiar... yet completely at odds with every record you've ever heard. If there was a worry that this was going to be an album that effectively shat on the memory of One Of The Strangest Rock Bands In History, these two tracks should toss that notion into the sea.
Os Mutantes trio 2 by Nino Andrés
And the rest of the LP? Well, it shares a similar quality to the 'Technicolor', which is (for my money) the exact midway point between West Coast America and Bahia. 'O Careca' is a fun samba jam and 'Samba Do Fidel' is a Cuban romp with glorious million-part harmonies that should dispel any notion of Sergio Dias having lost it.
'O Mensageiro' sees the band playing it pretty straight... as straight as Os Mutantes can... with a strolling, summery vibe akin to the 12-String Folk of The Byrds. Of course so, this sounds fresher than most by virtue of the fact that Everything Sounds Better When Sung In Portuguese. It kinda reminds me of 'Virginia' or somethin'. It's Mutantes Go Campfire.
This is the kicker: You will have invariably willed this LP on to fail because it doesn't feature Rita Lee or because you've built it up too much. Maybe you're too wary to take a chance on it because you've been stung too many times by comebacks... but to give 'Haih... or Amortecedor...' a wide berth would be pretty silly. Pretty much everything contained on it would slip snugly into a live set peppered with their songs of yesteryear without any effort at all. It's got all those things you loved about the band in the first place... weird ideas... McCartney-esque pop... catchier than mumps licks and shit.
You should buy this... you'll be trying to singalong when they invariably tour it. Quite possibly the best New Comeback Album From A Sixties Band you'll ever hear. Really, we shouldn't have expected anything else. Os Mutantes, it's good to have you back. [Mof Gimmers]
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