Critic's evaluation
Sold as a material that reflects Lê Almeida's creative evolution, I Feel In The Sky, his eighth studio album, arrives three years later, succeeding Aulas, the artist's seventh album. Recorded in Rio de Janeiro (RJ), São Paulo (SP), New York, Seattle, Aalborg and Baixada Santista, the material aims to show the impact of different geographical locations on the creative construction of the music.
A linear and redundant waltz is pronounced in the background in a hypnotic way and with a comfortingly icy base. It's not a broken record or CD, but a bittersweet voice, embraced by this magnetic melody, pronounces the name of the album over and over again in a cyclical pattern. It's no wonder that the title track is a simple prelude, but it's intoxicating in its magnet-enthralling proposal.
Lê Almeida's guitar is acidic in its softened movement. With its raw sonority, together with the raw sound of the drums, it suggests a garage ambience whose bass by João Casaes, despite being densely overshadowed by the guitar sonority, can be heard in its slightly boomy body and low melodic base. Closing the sound lines is a voice with a sweet timbre and a loose accent that, coming from Almeida, makes Missão De Ouvir a dark and numbing song that places the ability to listen as an act of choice, a filter on what you want to pay attention to. It's like the denial of support and welcome. Suffering in the open.
The sonar of the guitar's tuning has an irresistibly hypnotic effect. Even though the sound is already present in a crescendo of volume in the background, where it is possible to hear even the soft and subtly swinging breath of Alexander Zhemchuzhnikov's saxophone, the listener is still in a kind of unbreakable trance until Vicente Barroso's bass and the drums are the absolute protagonists drawing the rhythmic base. The curious thing is that, in this song, a sharpness on the edge of stridency becomes both the texture and the most striking sonority of the melody, which, brought in by the synthesizers of Casaes and John Di Lallo, offers a blowing pronunciation as if it were coming out of a clarinet. It is in this guise that Baile De Cinema is a poetic work about the evolution of the individual from birth to maturity.
While the synthesizer gives birth to a cozy and esoteric sonar, the drums come in the background with a raw and subtly swinging beat. Evolving into a kind of funeral waltz, Tafetá is a track that, like the title song, has a cyclical melody in which Joab Régis' guitar cooperates with the aesthetics of acidity. In this way, Tafetá is a work about pressure and the fragility of faith and belief.
Cacá Amaral's drums come on as if they were in a jam session, improvising, but with a slightly bluesy essence. At his side, Bigú Medine's bass and guitar build a synergistic and cyclical melody between the bass and the subtle stridency. With even the reproduction of the brass sound provided by the synthesizer, Artes Cênicas is like the soundtrack to a play. A melody that fits from the drama to the scenes that precede the action. Artes Cênicas is therefore an interlude of a chaotic nature in its mostly asymmetrical sound construction.
The beat of Ana Zumpano and David Beat's caxixi is in tune with the natural, almost indigenous rhythm promoted by the union of Julio St. Cecília and Raphael Vaz's guitars. Embraced by Otto Dardene's bittersweet vocals, with their tight, almost whispery pronunciation, Bicho Solto is a kind of mantra that also features a simple, yet strident guitar solo and a lyrical base helped by the participation of Alejandra Luciani with her sweetly high-pitched tone. Bicho Solto, with its imminent naturalistic sphere densely amplified by the rattle, is a song that speaks of the impulses that human beings keep in a closet in the depths of the unconscious. All with a generously fabulous narrative character.
After the opaque tinkling of the drumsticks, what follows is a melody that, led by a softly played guitar, exudes an infectious and deeply melancholy energy. Lancinating and gloomy, Clarões De Onça is a baroque indie rock song that, while dialoguing about rejection and judgment as incentives for a sense of insecurity and a lack of self-worth, reinforces the soft and loose lyrical interpretation as a signature of Lê Almeida's singing.
The rhythmic base exudes jazz, while Almeida's interpretation remains numb, soft and loose in its synthetic sweetness. Thanks to the drums and the saxophone's strident blowing, the swing takes over the atmosphere, even if the mood exuded by the melody is not enough to break the intoxicating psychedelia. Linear and repetitive, the sound of Solitude, as well as having a sci-fi flavor due to the synthesizer, is steeped in a lyricism that sees romance as a factor created and disseminated in the earthly world. A prophecy that must be followed like faith. It's the feeling of passion in a world of dreams.
The awakening of the new environment follows the psychedelia of Solitude. Full of intoxicating and even hallucinatory textures, Suíte Amoroso Afroponto stands out for its mixture of the hypnotic and the acidic, the latter coming through in full force with the growing and surprising presence of Henrique Diaz's guitar. Together with the shaking of the caxixi, the song manages to exude an essence that borders on manguebeat. Strong, contagious, indigenous. Natural. So natural that it surpasses the ambience of Bicho Solto. A long but energetic interlude.
The calm is dangerously seductive. Embracing the listener like the return of a long-distant loved one, the union of the guitar and the sonar of the rain stick coming from Ana Zumpano's synthesizer brings a generous dose of freshness. In Milhas E Milhas, Almeida's soft pronunciation reaches its peak, making it difficult for the listener to understand what is being sung. Another psychedelic and intoxicating interlude, whose plot is deeply nostalgic.
Accelerated, groovy, epic and slightly dramatic. The mixture of sounds reveals anguish amid the primordial chaos. The unstoppable, desperate and frantic drumming of Amaral and Zozio manages to communicate the agony through the purposeful incitement of dissonance, while Leandro Archela's synthesizer brings an acidic, strident and synthetic sweetness that inserts, even if briefly, slight notions of new wave. With its stunning instrumental, Costas Quentes is a song in which Lê Almeida shows her emotional neediness and her great need for affection and attention, consequently making the listener see her lonely essence, absent of affection.
It's an album rich in textures. There's no other way to describe I Feel In The Sky than as a dissection of the essence of Lê Almeida. A poetic man, but one who gets lost in his thoughts and ends up letting slip certain emotional weaknesses kept in the confines of his unconscious.
Psychedelic, hypnotic, acidic and intoxicating, the album is like access to Almeida's hypersensitivity. A sensitivity that loves, suffers, thinks, wanders, but also seeks to understand and find itself. Self-knowledge and the acquisition of a sense of freedom to be able to dream and release an identity that has been kept under wraps for fear of suffering rejection.
I Feel In The Sky is a monologue in which the main character tries to understand his impulses, at the same time as he needs support to be able to breathe and see which people are beneficial to keep in the social cycle. It is the filter of judgment, envy, pride and bad faith.
To make such scenarios of intense introspection count, Almeida also chose to take on the task of mixing to give I Feel In The Sky a more palpable and honest soul. Although there seems to be a deliberate flaw in the vocal equalization, something that creates a broad, deep and intoxicating notion of psychedelia, the album exudes the concept of experimenting with post-rock textures, but also veers between indie rock, jazz, manguebeat, sci-fi, new wave and so-called neo-psychedelia.
Rounding off the technical scope is the cover artwork. Signed by Casaes, Beeau Gomez and Josimar Freire, it consists of a watercolour work that makes Lê Almeida's image stand out, while the smoky background symbolizes the clouds which, in a reddish tone, suggest overcoming, but also the access of hope for a new dawn,
Released on 10/06/2023 via Transfusão Noise Records, I Feel In The Sky is a psychedelic monologue by an individual thirsting for affection, consolation and self-knowledge. Between synthetic, acidic and velvety textures, it exhorts the unconscious confusion of a character who simply wants to be free and be who he really is.
