Haih Or Amortecedor

by

Os Mutantes

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This was supposed to be another album of Mutantes with Arnaldo Baptista and Zelia Duncan, or Rita Lee perhaps, but all of them declined. Despite this fact this is a great album with great songs and it's very well recorded. It is somewhat strange calling this band "Os Mutantes". It's more like a great and innovative Sergio Dias band. I still like to call Os Mutantes that original line up with Rita Lee, Arnaldo Baptista and Sergio Dias. If you want to discover the great sound of Mutantes, or if you are a beginner, try first "Os Mutantes" (1968), "Mutantes" (1969), "A Divina Comedia ou Ando Meio Desligado" (1970), "Jardim Elétrico" (1971) and "Mutantes e seus Cometas no País dos Baurets" (1972). This is their essential discography. "O A eo Z" (1973) and "Tudo Foi Feito Pelo Sol" (1974) without Rita Lee are ok rock albums but only for the hardcore fans, IMHO. I am a fan of Sergio solo works and one of the few owners of his rare 1st solo album on cd. But, to my point of view, Mutantes are just that unique line up and their solo works are a different thing.

In one of the most anticipated reunions of recent decades (they were heavily lobbied by Kurt Cobain and Beck among others to reform, but politely declined for years), Os Mutantes returned to the studio and produced an album that reaches for the heights they once knew. It's a sincere and well-made Brazilian rock album with the requisite stylistic switch-ups and unconvential arrangements fans will expect, and if that sounds like damning with faint praise it very well might be. Something was lost in the intervening decade, although it certainly wasn't talent or effort.

One of the things that made Os Mutantes' absurdist pop/psychedelia so groundbreaking (especially for their first 4 or 5 albums) was the actual ground that it broke. The Tropicalia movement was across-the-board in the Brazilian arts, a slyly confrontational creative juggernaut that the government definitely felt threatened by. They jailed and exiled Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil -- pop stars -- after all. 35 years later, the political charge their unconventional, fearless songs once held is obviously absent, leftism isn't the dangerous occupation it once was. One of their songs was even used in a McDonald's commercial!

Mostly, that's intangible on "Haih" in strictly a musical sense. The production style still alternately bites the ears and then sweetly seduces them, often in the same song. To modern listeners, the most revolutionary aspect of the late 1960s/early 1970s band was their sonic versatility. One of the Baptista brothers was gifted with electronics and built all their guitar effects and pedals, as such things were expensive and hard to come by in Brazil. The new album was recorded with modern equipment however, and these more conventional "rock" sounds don't necessarily mesh with Os Mutantes' eclectic approach. Arnaldo Baptista and Rita Lee are absent as well, two key components to the band's mercurial chemistry. While Bia Mendes is an agile singer, the timbral differences and her more restrained presence than Lee make her contributions seem slight, and even forced sometimes.

My reservations with the new album all boil down to a pervasive stiffness, the sound of Sergio Dias (the only remaining original member) trying to put on a three-decades old musical costume instead of just going wild in the studio as his younger self and the other former band members did, to amazingly documented effect. That first classic run of albums is essential listening for everyone (and I mean everyone), whereas "Haih" is really only essential listening for established fans. It's good to have this band back, more or less, but I hope if they stick around and keep producing albums they let loose a little more and don't try to play to peoples' expectations of who they should be as much.