A BARCA DO SOL

I cannot share that much the (well excused) enthusiasm of my fellow reviewer and would not agree to his opinion about this album as masterpiece in folk progressive. It might have been an excellent one on a national level, actually I'm not aware of many other Brazilian bands in this sub-genre. I listened once to a few songs by CALIX which I liked quite a lot. BARCA DO SOL was presenting here mainly renditions of their traditional and hispanic music based on American folk. Admittedly the musicianship is excellent with a rich selection of instruments like cello, viola, flute and very good percussion.

A primeira batalha is a nice song with strong Hispanic influences using typical castagnettes, acoustic guitar, viola and flute. Brilho da noite is a rather quirky one with intense, at times even a bit too high pitched vocs, but great flute, strings and percussion. With Arremesso the mood is shifting very suddenly to a very mellow and melancholic one. Starting rather slow the song has every now and then some more vivid interludes with nice flute. Next two songs are as well rather quiet ones, not really bad actually, but sounding not very exciting (at least to me) as well apart of the closing part of Caminhão having some very good flute and cello playing. Lady Jane, which became quite famous in their country as I read somewhere and had been inspired both by the Stones' song as well by a book of D. H. Lawrence cannot hit my attraction either. Of the rest of the songs I can call only Corsário Satã a more interesting one with great flute, strings and percussion again, but this might be as well a matter of taste.

As a SUMMARY I couldn't say that A BARCA DO SOL's debut was a bad one, but it's as well not on par with excellent records from this sub-genre in an international comparison. Anyway it's a quite GOOD album and I would recommend it to anyone who's interested in the Brazilian prog folk scene.