#490 Gal Costa - Gal

More Tropicalia (nearly) self-titled albums from 1969! What a goddamn year.

If you have any interest in adventurous, weird music, you need to hear this. It was way, way ahead of its time. Tropicalia runs a spectrum roughly from crooning to batshit freakinout, and this blows right off the latter side. Gilberto Gil was Zappa kooky, this is actual crazy, downright unhinged, evoking This Heat, Can and Boredoms in their anarchistic deconstructionism.

How punk rock is Com Medo, Com Pedro? Gal flips the fuck out, beating Deerhoof/Yeah Yeah Yeahs/Bjork to the punch by a handful of decades as a mewling, screeching avatar of energy, while thundering bass, funk guitars and fragmented drums massacre defiantly peaceful pockets of strings and serenity.

Some of it is fairly typical Tropicalia: big buzzy bass, skittery beats, distorted guitars wailing, plenty of experimental flourishes, with curiously pretty touches occasionally swooping in to blanket everything in a delicate, fleeting veneer of serenity. Then there’s something like The Empty Boat, which is Boredoms-tastic, full of tuneless, desperate wailing, scattered drums, and wailing distortion.

Tropicalia took some cues from American psychedelic music, it can’t be denied. But it took it and turned it inside out and made Rube Goldberg machines from its bones. The more I hear, the more impressed I am, throttling past prog on my list of underappreciated genres, leaving it in the motherfuckin dust 4.5/5

You might like this if: you want to hear something noisy, frantic, and messy, but genuinely ahead of its time, full of maniacal energy and bursting at the seams.