http://calabashmusic.com/New Music From CeU on Calabash Music2008-12-02T11:44:49ZThe Calabash Music Teamsupport@calabashmusic.comCeUhttp://ceu.calabashmusic.com/#album_849132006-12-12T07:40:55ZMusic from CeUJust when you think that Brazil must surely have exhausted its supply of irresistibly jazzy, funky, sexy, soulful electro-pop singer-songwriters, someone like CéU comes along and makes you think that maybe that particular well is bottomless after all.

CéU's stateside release gives a whole new population the opportunity to be equally entranced. The album opens enticingly with "Vinheta Quebrante," a brief introductory track that builds itself up in delicate rhythmic layers.  With "Lenda," the album's first full-length track, CéU stakes out her musical territory more assertively: anchored by the juxtaposition of a subtly chromatic melody and a lazy funk groove and ornamented with a gracefully understated turntable scratch, the song sways seductively like seaweed in a warm ocean current, hints of reggae and dub lurking tantalizingly in the background.  Next comes the album's first single, a sweetly tuneful and more explicitly reggae-flavored song titled "Malemolência" (if you're lucky enough to have satellite access to the TV Globo network, then you may recognize it as a featured song in the soundtrack to Cidade dos Homens, the television adaptation of the celebrated film City of God).  Then, as if she's unwilling to let go of a good thing, she follows up on that track with the slightly more muscular "Roda," on which she delves deep into the rich soil of dub-funk groovaciousness again.  Yet despite its quietly chugging and soulful rhythms and its insinuating touches of turntablism, this song is actually quite spare in texture: its basic structure consists of little more than turntable scratches, a percolating bassline and a straightforward drum lick, while guitars and keyboard are allowed to lurk around the outside edges of the sound.

But as intriguing as the musical arrangements are, it's CéU's voice that really grabs your attention and won't let go.  On "Rainha," a jazzy and more conventionally Brazilian number, she delivers a beautifully cascading melody over rich, thick layers of horns and percussion, while on the drier and more bluesy "10 Contados" her voice whispers the melody softly and warmly into your ear with an almost unbearable sexiness.  On every song, CéU croons with a warmth and sensuality that is much more interesting and complex than the warblings of the sex-kittens-of-the-month that perennially inhabit the American R&B charts; CéU sings as if she were imparting secrets.  Her songs sound as if they're informed by life as it is really lived, in all of its emotional difficulty and complication, rather than by gauzy romantic illusions or sexpot posturing.]]>