Search - Affonsinho :: Esquina De Minas

Delicate, subtle Brazilian ballads

Joe Sixpack -- Slipcue.com | ...in Middle America | 07/04/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"A lovely gem from Brazil..! This is a gentle, acoustic-based homage to the Mina Gerais-based "Clube Da Esquina" scene that included artists such as Milton Nascimento, Lo Borges, Fernardo Brant and Ronaldo Bastos, and which produced several highly regarded, spacy jazz-pop albums of the 1970s and '80s. Singer-guitarist Affonsinho gently runs through over a dozen of their classic songs, including Nascimento's "Cravo E Canela," and Lo Borges's "Para Lennon E McCartney," taking each tune at a relaxed clip, and introducing a stylistic constancy that was not always present in the exploratory efforts of the Clube in its heyday. It's really a rather lovely album -- I went into this album prepared to be dismissive, and wound up thoroughly enchanted, particularly because Affonsinho sounds so much like Caetano Veloso does in his softer acoustic moments. Quite lovely, and definitely worth checking out."