Clube da Esquina

Pleasant acoustic album. Some nice Brazilian flourishes. Unfortunately I don’t speak Portuguese, sadly, I feel these songs need that skill set. Without following the lyrics this doesn’t cross over in the way Jorge Ben or Gal Costa does.

So good it almost makes you forget that throughout the latter half of the 20th century the United States backed and funded coups in Brazil and other South American countries to overthrow democratically elected governments and install right wing dictatorships who were more favorable to their corporate interests which resulted in the deaths and imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of people

That was beautiful.

Nice tunes and nice singing. Not really made for me though. I appreciate world music, but I don't really want to listen to it more than once.

Thr acoustic guitar was nice to listen to but that voice... yikes. Horribly out of tune

Perfectly pleasant, but nothing really stood out to me

It's a shame I don't speak Portugese, as I'm sure I'm missing out on a lot that this album has to offer by not being able to understand the lyrics. Even so, this was a delight to listen to. Both Milton and Borges have captivating voices; I feel like I could just sit and listen to them sing over a simple guitar track for hours on end (If only I knew what they were actually saying). As for the music itself, honestly this album is so long and dense with variety that it's hard to really summarize my thoughts with the amount of time I'm willing to spend on these silly little reviews, but to generalize as best I can, the record is packed full of some really beautiful soundscapes that it's easy to find yourself getting lost in, with lots of little flourishes and interesting progressions to keep your attention. It's very impressive to make an album this long that so rarely loses your interest.

My only real complaint is that the production and mixing seems a bit off in places. Sometimes the vocals seem a little drowned out by the instruments. I'm not sure what's going on near the end of Cais either when all the sound suddenly cuts out in one ear. I suppose they might not have been working with top of the line production techniques in Brazil in the early 70s, so it's understandable.

Favourite tracks: Tudo Que Voce Podia Ser, Um Girassol Da Cor De Seu Cabelo, Os Povos, Trem De Doido

Sigh. It was fine.

2.5 stars.

Smooth, goes down easy. Chill vibes, pretty harmonies. A bit long and the overall feeling isn't something I'm likely to come back to, but it's interesting and I'm glad I've heard it.

A bit like the Brazilian football team, not as exciting as it was back in the seventies!

Cool 😎

1001 Albums Vol. 0008: Clube Da Esquina
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Introduction: This is an album that I've literally never heard of before. I've not seen anyone talk about it online, no critical reviews of it, and so on up until this moment. Hell, I still don't even know that much about it. I get most of my information from the small Wikipedia snippet that the website decides to take, yet that doesn't even tell me all that much besides the story of the cover. I generally don't like to look all that deep into albums before I listen to them as I want to go in forming my own opinion and being genuinely surprised by what I hear, and I'm going to stick to that this time. I would absolutely never check a critical review or critic website pertaining to the album I'm supposed to be listening to. If I've heard a review in the past, however, then I obviously can't do anything about that. I do still like to have some context going into an album, yet I like that context to be vague and preferably only include details as to why the album was made and what events lead up to its creation. Anyway, with that said, this is actually my first album which is not going to be in English. I use Spotify, so I'll be able to translate the lyrics on the fly, however. This album was released way back in 1972. It was actually a collaborative effort between two Brazilian artists. Now, Spotify does credit some songs to one specific artist at times, so I'm not entirely sure if each song was collaboratively written or if these two artists wrote songs solo. I don't know. Either way, I have heard that this album was extremely influential for Brazilian music at the time of its release and even now. Now, apparently the genre it helped push forward in known as MPB. I have literally never heard of this genre of music before, so I have absolutely no idea what to expect. I think that should just sum up my feelings about this album perfectly. I just have no idea what I'm getting into. This album was apparently influential, and I tend to automatically associate influential albums with being so unbelievably good, yet there are plenty of artists that have had influential releases which absolutely sucked. Nevertheless, I can do nothing but get into this album.
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Track 1: Tudo O Você Podia Ser Score: 11/10
Track 2: Cais Score: 9/10
Track 3: O Trem Azul Score: 10/10
Track 4: Saídas E Bandeiras Nº 1 Score: 8/10
Track 5: Nuvem Cigana Score: 9/10
Track 6: Cravo E Canela Score: 9/10
Track 7: Dos Cruces Score: 9/10
Track 8: Um Girassol Da Cor Do Seu Cabelo Score: 11/10
Track 9: San Vicente Score: 9/10
Track 10: Estrelas Score: 8/10
Track 11: Clube Da Esquina Nº 2 Score: 10/10
Track 12: Paisagem Da Janela Score: 10/10
Track 13: Me Deixa Em Paz Score: 9/10
Track 14: Os Povos Score: 9/10
Track 15: Saídas E Bandeiras Nº 2 Score: 8/10
Track 16: Um Gosto De Sol Score: 9/10
Track 17: Pelo Amor De Dues Score: 8/10
Track 18: Lilla Score: 9/10
Track 19: Trem De Doido Score: 10/10
Track 20: Nada Será Como Antes Score: 9/10
Track 21: Ao Que Vai Nascer Score: 8/10
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Conclusion: I came in having absolutely no idea what to expect, and I came out feeling absolutely moved, surprised, and shocked at what I had just heard. This album is a gem. It's a masterpiece. It's honestly a shame that this album is so vaguely know about nowadays. I did some additional research after listening to the album, and I discovered that it apparently sold pretty well back in the day. Hell, it even made its way all the way to U.S. record stores. That should honestly say something. I don't even know where to begin with this album. I mean, I guess I'll start by talking about just how varied every single track off this album is. There is so, so, so much genre-blending across this album that I honestly couldn't even name every genre I heard during my listen. Most of the time, this much variety would be a bad thing as it would make the album feel a bit disorganized, yet it honestly couldn't be a better thing here. It's a bit weird to describe, yet every song off this album, despite having different genres, all feel as they belong in the same album. This may be due to the fact that most songs use similar core instrumentation, it may be because of the amazing vocals, or it may be because of something that I don't even really notice. I don't know. Now, like I just said, this album has a crap-ton of variety spread throughout it. You may be listening to a traditional folk song one minute and then be thrown into a psychedelic rock song the next with a kick-as guitar. Point is, this album is very musically varied. I would honestly have to do a track-by-track analysis of every song to describe fully the musical tone of this album. I've done that a few times in the past and really don't feel like doing it anymore, so I'm not. Now, I will say, all of these tracks do feel musically united by a weird tropical sense spread throughout most songs. It's really not all that tropical, yet it's the best way I can describe it. I'm sure someone more familiar with MPB could do a better job at describing what I'm trying to. Nevertheless, this album's music is masterfully written. The arrangements are perfect for each song, the amount of uniqueness never leaves me bored, the instrumentation for each genre fits perfectly, the production of the instrumentation is wonderful, and many more things that I just can't say because of how long it would take. Like I just mentioned, the production off of this album is absolutely amazing as well, especially for the early 70's. I mean, this is the same year Ziggy Stardust released and this album sounds miles better than it production wise. I mean, the amount of variety here lets you have practically every great aspect of production you can think of. Subdued and heavy guitars in a psychedelic rock track, an echoing voice in a plain psychedelic track, vibrant sounds in a sunshine pop track, and so on. There was so much that went into producing every track, and the same tricks for a singular track couldn't be applied to the next because of how different every song is. Again, this album is freaking amazing. Now, the vocals are simply sublime. Despite what I said in the intro, people who add the lyrics to Spotify have to manually edit the translations in, so I actually had no idea what the singer was saying most of the album; however, that honestly didn't matter in a way. I mean, his voice is so freaking good that it alone manages to carry an emotional weight with it just by sound alone. The best way I can describe his voice is almost like something you would hear out of a church or from certain tribes. Of course, the variety of genres on here forces the singer to mildly adapt his voice for certain situations as well, yet they sound flawless in every one. Like I said, I am barely able to understand anything off of this album, yet I was able to translate some songs. I did look up some translations of songs as well, and I can say that this album has some lyrical genius in it as well. While the lyrics definitely sound better in the language they were intended to be heard in, they're still very poetic and artistic even in a different language. That's all I'm really going to touch on with the album's lyrics since I feel as if I can't truly grasp the nature of them. I can still say they're great nonetheless. In fact, I can say that about this album as a whole. It's perfect and so, so beyond its time. I mean, there were points where I felt I was genuinely listening to something from another world. There were moments where I forgot I was listening to an album made in the 70's as well. Honestly, one of the main reasons I even started this extremely lengthy challenge was to find an album exactly like this. I wanted to find a truly hidden masterpiece which many had not heard before. I think I've found exactly that. It's albums like this that motivate me to continue through this journey. It's perfect. There are no better words to describe this album other than that. I will definitely be re-listening to many songs off of this album.
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Clube Da Esquina Score: 10/10
Song Average: 9.1/10

Ein Werk brasilianischer Musik, das mit seiner Mischung aus psychedelischem Folk, Barock-Pop und MPB (Música Popular Brasileira) viele musikalische Ideen vereint. Die Produktion ist dicht und komplex, oft überladen, was den Zugang erschwert. Einzelne Stücke wie „Cais“ oder „O Trem Azul“ stechen hervor, doch insgesamt fehlt es dem Album aus dieser Perspektive an emotionaler Klarheit und struktureller Kohärenz.

*I never would have listened to this if I wasn't doing this project
*It was cool to hear Brazilian music, but nothing blew me away....solid musicianship though

Cool vibe I guess?

Not at all what I expected based on my exposure so far to brazilian music.
The string instrumentals in um gosto de sol reminded me of the Beatles/George Martin. A good vibes listen, 4*

I really like how this album flows together and how the artist has layered in the harmonies so well. I realized at the midway point, San Vicente that it had been building towards a crescendo for a while. It's hard for me to say "this song is a hit" when it comes to world music. It's more about the vibe and the aesthetic when I listen to it. So by that metric, this hits quite well. It feels like a movie score. It has such ups and downs, moments that feel like anticipation and moments that feel like a celebration. I found the album overall to be very good. Totally pleasant.

One track has a dude in my right ear doing the rhythm with his mouth. Definitely listen with headphones as they make use of the different sides. I don’t speak this language so I don’t know what they’re saying except when they mention arms or now and stuff like that. Didn’t expect the electric guitar on the later track. Second to last track best guess translation is Nothing Will Be The Same As Before. The tempo on these songs was all more mellow than I expected but honestly I had no right to expect anything. Overall, I never would have listened to this otherwise and am quite glad I did. I listened while walking around a sculpture garden and park on an art walk and it meshed perfectly.

I liked this. Mellow vibe.

Fine. Pleasant. Nothing special.