rev_m_brazil

MANHATTAN TRANSFER
Brasil

as reviewed by Jack Crompton at Amazon.com, April 30, 2008

The dream is still alive...

Brasil, released 1990, by the vocal jazz group Manhattan Transfer comes across as cool water on a hot summer’s day. It’s refreshing and original and is chock full of those sensual brazilian trademark rythmns done in a very upscale sophisticated way.

A remarkably diverse vocal group, MT has earned a highly esteemed reputation for great music spanning many genres and executed with tight vocal harmony and impeccable musicianship. Brasil is no exception and perhaps raises the bar a few notches. What strikes me most about the songs here is how different sounding each one is... the moods change from one to the next and there is no redundancy. Each track brings with it new exotic sounds and rythmns. Lyrically, it paints a beautiful but accurate portrait of a country of great change and transformation, with all the inherent complexities abut all very ‘brazilian’ in character. Most of the tracks here are around five minutes or longer, so they deliver quite a bit of substance.

The sound adventure completes with the exotic track, ‘Notes from the Underground’ which is an amazing arrangement of unison singing over a primal drum beat, with a bridge that is softened by a jazz bridge that floats one upwards into a spirit of optimism... Truly a musical masterpiece.

Considered by many to be among MT’s finest work to date, which is saying a lot for this prodigious group has made a huge volume of wonderful music), Brasil promises to be a welcome surprise to the uninitiated and refreshing respite for those of us who have visited these shores before. ‘Can you hear the voices?’

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