#450 Tom Ze - Tom Ze (1968)

More early tropicalia self-titled albums! (edit, though this is apparently also known as Grande Liquidaçao)

The simplest way to explain this album is that it's somewhere halfway between Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso; a watered down version of the former's eclecticism washed with a slightly rougher version of the latter's crooning. Everything here is in watercolor, with broad, lush strokes of horns and organs in place of complex runs, with choruses of vocals in places of Gil's pointed yelping, but with that rock and roll edge. The result isn't loungey, nor particularly garagey, eschewing two of the main tropicalia touchstones; its more readily in line with the slightly slower-tempoed British bands of the 60's, say The Small Faces, The Zombies, and Nirvana.

As an American listener in 2012, it makes it a bit less exciting, less exotic, but this isn't to undermine the album's considerable inventiveness. First of all, those bands are among the best of the decade, not a bad place to start. Secondly, this is only loosely comparable to those bands, and only closely akin to them by comparison to other tropicalia acts of the era. Taken on its own, this is still a skittering, sprawling mess of intruments, rhythms and vocals, soaring like a proto-polyphonic spree on tracks like Gloria and Sem Entrada E Sem Mais Nada.

I think because of this scatteredness, the album is harder to classify and harder to appreciate, dense colored noise read as brown. But listen to the interlocks of drums, vocals, organs, jangled guitars, and trumpets on Quero Sambar Meu Bem closely and watch the patterns swirl. A victim of my short-turnaround structure, worth your listen, though I think that its a bit mushy for me. Gil is still the winner of the three so far 3.5/5

You might like this if: you liked slightly sleepy, slightly psychadelic 60's rock and want a funky, inventive, Portuguese-language twist