DEIXADEME MORRER NO BOSQUE

With so many neo folk artists marshaling limited resources in the service of a sole release, and with SANGRE DE MUERDAGO losing a pivotal partner almost out of the gate, one might have expected their history to end with their self titled debut, but they returned a couple of years later with the sprawling "Deixademe Morrer No Bosque". Translated to "Let me Die in the Woods", it is a uniformly melancholic work, equal parts acoustic and classical guitars, with vocal, string and whistle accents. The pace and mood is resigned, almost as though the resolutions are preordained and Pablo and friends are playing them out because that is all they know. One other thing they know is beauty - beauty of nature, and the beauty of a spirit that owes everything to those forces, and is aware of it in every state of being, be it of this world or beyond.

The opener and closer are somewhat atypical, with the title cut deploying a hurdy gurdy, an instrument that can attain stridency if need be, but here played as the last standing entity on a battlefield, with appropriate awe. The coda is one of the few comparatively upbeat pieces, reminiscent of the more heavily strummed numbers on the debut. In between, a couple of tracks are sung in English, one by Pablo and one by guest Lisa Kula, and these can't help but offer variety and perhaps the intent of imparting a message more broadly, even if the mood and enunciation remain as in a spell or trance. "Soterrados Baixo as Pedras" notches slightly above the others in resonating with my own inner voice, but other listeners will experience this personal work differently at different times.

The level of consistency here allows the hour to pass by as a single sweet caress or emptying/sharing of consciousness, or as an impenetrable impediment to one's daily progress in between birth and death, a problem that its shorter predecessor did not have to ponder. I'm in the first camp and, given the band's international success in a commercially restricted genre, it would seem I'm far from alone.