Monica's finest moment... so far!
Eric Crawford | California, USA | 03/23/2007
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Monica Salmaso gets better and better, working with top musicians in the Sao Paulo scene and selecting chestnuts and unknown gems from popular and rootsy sources. As always, her voice brings to mind an art song singer, schooled in Schubert and Wolf, who somehow ended up in a samba school by mistake. The result is something that, on the surface, seems cooler and more formal than many singers of samba and other Brazilian styles, yet she inhabits the songs and lends a radiance that other singers simply never imagine.
Highlights include the haunting E Doce Morrer No Mar, written by always-soulful baiano Dorival Caymmi, and the light-as-a-feather samba Moro Na Roca. Assum Branco is Monica at her most sinuous and graceful, while Cabrochinha is a humorous story-samba put over with dry wit, while Estrela de Oxum is, to my ears, about as beautiful a series of notes as I can imagine a human being making."