Caetano Veloso
Recorded in 1985 in New York, this album features Brazilian singer and songwriter Caetano Veloso, mostly accompanying himself with an acoustic guitar, and it is a triumph of understatement and nuance. Veloso is a poet--the words are in Portuguese but are translated in the booklet--and delivers the words with an uncanny sense for shadings, and impeccable phrasing. This might be hard to gauge in his own compositions but becomes clearer in his tributes to Antonio Carlos Jobim, the bossa nova master, (with the medley "Dindi/Eu Sei Que Vou Te Amor"), and to John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and Michael Jackson (in a wickedly clever medley including "Nega Maluca," "Brazilian Song," "Billie Jean," and "Eleanor Rigby").--Fernando Gonzalez