Search - Os Mutantes :: World Psychedelic Classics 1: Brazil: The Best Of Os Mutantes/Everything Is Possible!

Shockingly great music

_ | Lowell MA | 02/27/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"A couple of years ago, I bought the second Nuggets box set, the one that features psychedelic '60's music from outside of the U.S.A. (the first set was almost exclusively American). Anyhow, one of the songs on that second set was an odd tune called "Bat Macumba" by a strange Brazilian group called "Os Mutantes" ("The Mutants"). I liked the song right away, but as I listened to it a few times, it really began to get under my skin. When I got a chance to hear more from this band (via this album, "Everything is Possible"), I realized that "Bat Macumba" was not a fluke.To be a little less indirect, Os Mutantes made some of the most daring, exciting, off-the-wall-and-yet-surprisingly-listenable music I've ever heard. Discovering this music was for me one of those truly mind-expanding, change-your-life kind of events. It actually makes me want to learn Portuguese in the same way that Dostoyevsky made me want to learn Russian. It's also opened my ears to Tropicalia, a style I was never really aware of before, but which I am now beginning to explore.I should warn the prospective listener that this stuff is pretty wierd. In fact, if I understand it correctly, wierdness for wierdness' sake (or perhaps for creativity's sake) was a big part of what Tropicalia was all about. But if you can stand the wiredness, and listen with an open mind and open ears, Os Mutantes' music is very, very rewarding. This album (on which there is not a single bad song, by the way) is a good place to start, if only because it's still in print. It might also give you an introductory glance into a whole movement (and a whole culture) of which you may have known little."