Critic's evaluation
When you can already see the border that divides 2022 from 2023, the São Paulo quintet Pelados decides to announce their second studio album. Entitled Foi Mal, the material is the fifth product released by the group, which counts with three other singles.
The lo-fi is the genre that pulls the dawn of O Sgt. Peppers Foi Decapitado with its characteristic and purposeful squeak while a waltzing harmony of voices is evidenced in a babbling and dramatic unison. Just when the viewer seemed to expect nothing new, Vicente Tassara enters with a bittersweet velvety vocal whose pitch makes the song even more melodic while making the interlude a melancholy cozy product.
A low, female voice emerges with a commanding, as if creating a homey, garage atmosphere. It is Manu Julian giving way for Luiz to start drawing strident and acid melodic lines from the keyboard, an exercise that ends up creating a remarkable seventies ambience since the first moments of the song. Mixing new wave and synth-pop, Mesmasmesmesmasmasmas brings Manu with a huskier vocal while she dialogues, in a queasy, impatient and boring way, about the routine sameness. At the same time, in between criticizing the sameness in order to consider herself as something heterogeneous to this routine conservatism, she is disappointed to be abandoned by the one she has a passion for. This feeling of disappointment is well represented by Tassara's long-suffering guitar solo.
With a similar timbre to that of Fernanda Takai, Manu soon enters the scene accompanied by an awkward melody in her alternative-groovada agitation. With the protagonism of the Helena Cruz’ bass booming swing, Vampirinhos Do Amor talks about the need to have people around who inspire well-being, at least in appearance. After all, deep down, Vampirinhos Do Amor discusses low self-esteem and insecurity in a stunning way.
With Theo Ceccato's drums as the element that builds the rhythm and cadence of the song, the discussion about shyness falls, as it did in the previous songs, under a juvenile point of view. Keeping the contagion at the same level and with the adhesion of the guitar as an artifice that delivers texture, Julho de 2015 brings the company of Laura Lavieri's high-pitched vocal in this reverie that also permeates the notions of self-confidence associated with the need to extravasate such limitations.
A short, indecipherable monologue pulls a sour, staggering, even numbing melody. With a 4x4 beat incorporating pop into the melody, the fusion between synthesizer and guitar creates a catchy beat with a very radio-friendly aesthetic to A Linha Tênue Entre Gostar E Não Gostar, a song whose lyrical construction is designed to hold the listener's attention. Guided by the linear bass lines during the verses, the song has a certain sensuality from Manu's interpretation, who shows herself decided and tired of an exhausting relationship that seems to be stagnated in a great sameness, which also flirts somehow with the content of Mesmasmesmesmasmesmas. An intriguing single from Foi Mal, to say the least.
Electronic drums come in accelerated in their groove and accompanied by the bass in the creation of a booming rhythmic sphere. It's funny that, in this apparent mess, the listener can identify funk, MPB and even rap in this dissonant melody construction. It is in the meantime that Manu expresses her interest for everything that is out of the standard or that is considered in excess. Non-commitment, naivety, futility, immaturity, and even spoiling are ingredients that dominate and exhale through every pore of Nunca Sozinha, Sempre Mal Acompanhada.
An almost angelic vocal chant permeates the atmosphere before a slightly strident sonar comes in from the programming. Accompanied by a curiously sensual, slightly funky and provocative groove, this sound serves as the basis for Medo De Ficar Pelado!!! another interlude from Foi Mal. Comical in its debauched and immature interpretation, the track is composed of repetitions of his name in an almost incomprehensible manner by the inebriated interpretation of such pronunciations.
Moving into a softer sound and more commercial aesthetic, Foda Que Ela Era Linda presents the more mainstream side of Pelados. From the sunny and soft indie pop, the quintet offers the first properly romantic song of Foi Mal. Even without great lyrical resourcefulness, however, the song manages to be infectious in its alternative, noventist aesthetic and its intoxicating linearity. In a way, it is even possible to identify aesthetic similarities between Foda Que Ela Era Linda and Alive, single by Empire Of The Sun, which puts the present track with a slight leaning towards synth-pop.
Curiously sexy, provocative and intriguing, the bass enters the scene like a character sneaking out of a compromising scene. In between, the swinging smoothness of an embryonic reggae in the company of the metronome's time counting are a stunning softness to the melody. Reflecting Pelados' boldness to bring unfiltered and uncompensated lyricism, Coquinha Gelada After Sex comes with a plot of comic interpretation that brings a couple divided between the one who wants to try new things and the other who goes crazy just to please. Without libidinous derision, it's possible to say that Coquinha Gelada After Sex is the attempt to do something radio-friendly, which ends up becoming a kind of b-side single especially by a sudden familiarity with the sound of American Boy, Estelle's single.
The horizon is gray. Without color, brightness or even humor. Drama dominates every corner of the scene in a strangely hypnotic way. Bringing a sense of maturity in a clothing whose melancholic sensory experimentation escapes from the provocative and debauched pattern of Pelados, Música De Término, in its refrain that flirts with the melodic structure of the apex of Tanto Faz, Jota Quest's single, has in itself a message of overcoming. The maturity of letting go of the past and giving vent to the new page of the book of her own history gives the character a sense of self-confidence necessary to move on with life without being hurt by the memories of previous events.
The ukulele's treble is the only major sound. In its soft, linear melody, it awakens a sense of peace and tranquillity during the course of the instrumental Ser Solteiro É Legal, another interlude from Foi Mal. It's interesting how with just the lines of this single instrument the listener can, through his visual imagery lens, see himself sitting on the edge of a hill at a sunset receiving all the freshness of the sea breeze graced by a nostalgic and comfortably numbing sunset. A sudden reassurance that tenderly embraces the happy hearts in their own solitude.
Ovational shouts. Incomprehensible chatter. Introspective and intimate, the melody seems to create an atmosphere of monologue while Manu gives the idea of dialoguing with her own consciousness. The muffled instrumental gives the notion of garage sound, but not dirty. Only rawness is the mote ingredient of the song. The annoyance of the crowd coming from the protagonist gives the idea of enocloophobia, which incites in the listener even the false sensation of breathlessness. Yo La Tengo Na Casa Do Mancha has in the slightly desperate drums the rhythmic protagonist in this dialogue about unpredictability, fate, and emotional freedom that sounds like a disastrous love affair.
With a contagious beat drawn only by the acid of the programming, the song dives into an interesting undulating and tidal synth-pop melody that accompanies the crew in a plot about change, about maturation and the break of synchronicity of a couple. This is how the title track gives the characters the possibility to feel the pain and to be carried away by the pain of the breakup.
It is the voice and representation of the teenage years. Pre-adolescence and adolescence perfectly represented in a material that sounds debauched in its carefree nonchalance. Foi Mal is a conscious comic apology for the sense of immaturity that exudes abundantly from the purposeful dissonances created by Pelados.
Like the process of self-knowledge and maturing, the album brings 13 chapters that dialogue about emotional experiences whose melodies represent the confusion of personalities within an individual in the process of maturing. The pains of termination, the dissatisfaction in relation to society and routine, the perception of what arouses pleasure. It is everything that helps in the transformation of the person.
And in this dialogue, Pelados mixes well the acid and danceable sounds of 70's synth-pop with MPB, funk, lo-fi, reggae and an alternative ambience that many times sounds dissonant. Embarrassing, nauseating, and narcotic, the sounds of Foi Mal bring a balance that, with the help of Luiz Martins' mixing, make evident the quintet's references.
Sounding like a fusion of Los Hermanos, Supercombo, Pato Fu, and Banda do Mar, the latter evidenced mainly by the waltzing duets between Manu and Ceccato, the album is simply the attraction caused by the uncompassionate, intense, and experimentalist creation that sells itself as a pop sound of seventies and nineties references.
Closing the technical scope comes the cover art. Signed between Manu and Gabriela Bernal, the cover brings an air that mixes grunge and post punk in a take that sounds like a kind of mourning. A mourning for the disappointments that the characters cause others and that is extremely well represented with a non-committal title: 'it was bad'.
Released on 11/11/2022 via Matraca Records, Foi Mal is the melody of the inconstancy of adolescence, or rather, of the maturation process. It is the proposal of an embryonic anti-melody that represents the emotional instability and the formation of the individual's essence through life's experiences.
