RAYA - Tô

Like Hate Moss and A Transe, Tuim is another duo that stands out in the independent scene. Even so, Paula Raia, the soulful half of the Rio duo, decided to fly higher. From this decision, the singer decided to immerse herself in a solo career, whose official release happens with Tô, the debut record of her project RAYA.

The environment is as intimate, improvised, and spontaneous as possible. In the background, a voice unravels news from a TV news program while, in the foreground, a cough to regain vocal awareness is heard. Then a raspy, high-pitched voice, illustrating the maturity of life, bursts in with something that sounds like a clarification. In this clarification, Maria Helena Goulart begins a monologue that is nostalgic only in the sense of the memory of an occasion. In it Maria Helena talks about love, about the quality of being a grandmother. At the same time, there is in this context the dawning of an elucidation for certain behaviors originating in a second person, someone who, from the interaction received, has created a certain unsettling personality pattern. However, what is evident in Tive Lá, Por Vó is an unconditional affection, a relationship not only of complicity, but of a love that cannot be put into words. Of an emotion that, being so strong, needed the help of others to prevent it from becoming something evil to those for whom it was intended. Tive Lá, Por Vó is the answer to an unsettling, undecipherable question existing at the core of an omnipresent character.

It is like the pouring of flowers on a greenish, perfectly pruned lawn in the sunlight of an autumn evening. Sweet, soft, surprising and Lusitanian, the sound of the mandolin of Navalha Carrera is like a generous dose of freshness in the environment. Accompanied by a low, dry riff coming from Pablo Arruda's basset, it brings a curious swing that is graced with an embryonic, contagious joy. Then a hoarse voice appears on the melodic surface. It is Paula Raia putting a more tender and dry texture into the soundscape, but whose resourcefulness exudes a deep softness that is intoxicated in a palpable sweetness as she walks through a folk terrain that serves as a bed for a reflective lyricism about the role of women in the social evolutionary process. Growing in harmony during the vocal chorus thanks to the synchronous entrance of Victor Ribeiro's guitar and Livia Mattos' accordion, Registro Geral is a song that mixes MPB and folk references in a soft plot that is about, simply, a lack of awareness about how strong, empowered, spontaneous and antagonistic a woman can be. Between the depth of insecurity and the highest stage of self-esteem lies a social representative who has no fear and yet sensitivity.

When she opens her eyes, her vision is blurred. But what you see among the blurs is almost like a fairy-tale scene, enchanting. Blossoming flowers, various perfumes penetrate the nasal pores and promote extrasensory trips before one is even able to regain consciousness. With our eyes still open, the landscape gains a cleaner and more concrete vision that shows, besides the flowers, a stream of crystalline water cutting through the meadow. With strength regained, it is possible to stand up and keep a straight spine. A deep breath. A stretch. And, finally, the contemplation of the present moment. Tontura is more than a folk-based song. It is a work that, like Registro Geral, explores the sensorial field while verbally talking about perseverance, positivity, and even a certain naivety to see beauty even where it doesn't exist. It is a song that, among the accordion flourishes and almost hypnotic strumming, speaks not of conformation, but of acceptance and of making what you have something better and more pleasurable even if it is not.

The breath of the wind makes the leaves dance along with the petals thrown to the ground. Together with the rational and assertive rhythm of María Clara Belle's cello, it is as if the guitar mixed the bucolic French with the Brazilian. The purity of the air gains soft colors, a perfume so sweet it has not yet been catalogued, and a delicacy that dismantles even the most somber human being. This happens thanks to Paula's union with Júlia Mestre. After all, between the hoarse bass that promotes a mixture between Marisa Monte and Maria Gadú timbres coming from Paula's vocal, Júlia brings an immeasurable sweetness whose simple hoarseness creates an aggrandizing vocal harmony. Of intense emotional capacity, the eyes water with the melodic and harmonic beauty created in Comentários A Respeito de Belchior, a song that has dramatic flashes and whose lyricism exalts simplicity and the present at the same time that creates consciousness of maturation. More than Belchior himself, Comentários A Respeito de Belchior brings in its melody strong influences from names like Zé Ramalho, Alceu Valença, and Sérgio Reis. Unquestionably a strong, sensitive, and emotional single from Tô.

A tranquilizing and sertanejo aroma escapes from each sonority in the process of synchronization. With an even more bucolic air than Comentários A Respeito de Belchior, the melody in construction allows the listener to feel the earth beaten on his feet, the smell of the grass, hear the birds singing and the swaying of the grass plantation. Despite the perfumed softness emanating from the sound, what follows is a delicate voice that presents in each verbal utterance a contesting power. In Os Corpos Não São Iguais, Paula dialogues about female heterogeneity in a way that her verses take on an interesting similarity to the lyrical bridge drawn by Pitty in her single Máscara. More than the differences, the plot aims at extolling the prerogative that each woman is a separate, independent, and free being who gets emotional for different reasons, suffers for different reasons, and laughs for different reasons. Os Corpos Não São Iguais is a song about authenticity.

The eyes are downcast. The body, somewhat bent over. Tears form in front of the pupils, but curiously they don't have the strength to run down the stream of the face. At the same time, the hands walk slowly through the dry leaves on the railing. The feeling of roughness and dryness delivers, for a few moments, the escape from reality. This is how the curious introductory melancholy becomes evident. Doce Ilusão has, since its first sonares, an interesting numb essence that gets lost among jolts of a romantic breeze. As the name suggests, therefore, the track deals, between dramatic verses and a dizzying tension, with deceptions involving love. Even so, the way the string instruments move around creates a harmonic waltz that is contagious with its sense of suspense that ends in a consistent dramaticity thanks to the weeping flight of the cello.

A curious chaos emerges through the cello's purposely out-of-tune notes. Such an initial sonority makes the listener feel like floating in an unknown environment. Amid enigmatic landscapes filled with a darkness broken by stellar glows, the spectator is loose in space, without control, but with attentive and limpid eyes before the spatial beauty. It is then that the guitar imposes a slightly melancholic melody that recovers the notion of the concept of the word home. With softness and delicacy, the melody then starts to acquire contours of an enigmatic nostalgia, but emotionally contagious. With sweetness and subtlety, Paula introduces a lyricism whose interpretation and the sum of the first verses create a romantic atmosphere in the purest sense of the word love. Even before a new verse ends, another equally soft and delicate voice invades the scene. It is Mariana Volker putting more sweetness into a plot that mixes tension and drama, but finds the way to harmony in love. Between folk and MPB, Cabeça Sideral is a song that not only deals with motherhood, but also with fears, anxieties, and insecurities. Of the dichotomy of pleasure and despair at taking responsibility for another life. An experience that shines the purest meaning of the feeling of love.

It is as if you can hear the sound of translucent water following its course in a small stream. Between curves and depressions, the ripples add to the linear, soothing sound of the water's course. A calmness then invades the core of the individual in a way that blends with flashes of hope and re-energization. After the minimalism softened by the guitar, the melody flows into a latent drama from a waltz that mixes torpor, joy, and warmth from the notes of the cello. Bringing together diverse ingredients such as flamenco and MPB, Riachinho is a song that transits between themes of self-knowledge, hope, and even emotional instability in the midst of a structure that, at times, ends up creating a similarity to the refrain of Vapor Barato, single by O Rappa.

Hands meet. There is a circle of bodies. All together, heads down, as if they were prepared for a candomblezeiro ritual. Suddenly, the hands come loose and are positioned open in front of the bodies as if they were receiving new energies. Their heads are straight and their pose is imposing. Of increasing and penetrating dramaticity, a prayer is heard in the background while a firmer, audible voice overrides such ceremonies. Revolução provides an interesting chaos inherent to the painful feelings that a relationship can leave behind at the same time as it dialogues, between melodic turning points of grandiose harmony, about the redemption of love.

It is curious to note how simplicity can be tied to greatness. Just like in cooking, in art, and in literature, in music what is less can be synonymous with more. And in Tô, this concept is set to the sound of the fifth symphony. Outrageously scenic, delicately sensitive, and perfumedly reflective, this is a work that speaks of women, of love, of inner strength. Of life. Of people. Of faith.

Not always what you project is what you actually get as a final product, but the work works as the typed verbalization of an enthusiastic 'yes' to an imagetic questioning about immersing or not in a solo career. After all, with the album Paula Raia not only showed that she is a good lyricist, but also that she knows how to combine elements, melodies, references and regions in a way to create a product in which all tracks are able to offer sceneries, textures, perfumes and emotions.

Just as Hate Moss did in NaN, Paula made Tô a sensorial and scenographic album capable of combining joy, melancholy, nostalgia, self-analysis, and reflection in the same environment. And to combine different emotions, the team of musicians she recruited offers dramatic, tearful and sensitive melodies that combine the purity and experimentation of the new MPB and the folkloric melody of folk and the bucolic aromas coming from the countryside with the Latin air of flamenco.

Making such melodies evident to the listener is the work of Gui Marques. In charge of the mixing, the professional left Tô with a sound result with great harmonies, emotional and sensitive melodies and with an ability to transport the listener to different environments simultaneously.

Here comes Ribeiro channeling all this amplitude in one of the decisive exercises for the album to come out the way he wanted. With his production, Tô didn't come out only emotional, analytical or experimental. He came out with a free soul. Free to mix experiences, feelings and, mainly, it is the result of a creative freedom supported by a tutor of great sound consciousness.

Closing the scope of the album comes the visual part. Signed by Laura Fragoso, the cover artwork couldn't be more literal. Similar to the concept of the cover of Outside Voices, K.Flay's EP, by bringing Paula Raia inside a closet, the artwork brings a mix of interpretations ranging from self-knowledge, insecurity, and intimacy. However, because the closet door is open, the idea is of oxygenation, freedom, and courage to face changes. These topics, added to the bucolic environment that fills the background, complete the communication of the photograph. Living and facing the adversities of the unpredictable, but without leaving aside the essence, the origin. Without forgetting who you are and where you came from.

Released on 06/10/2022 via Toca Discos, Tô is an album in which melody and harmony build, with a contagious minimalism, a rhythmic grandiosity whose beauty is stunning. A work that launches, in the hands of artistic emancipation, a name that promises to enhance the new MPB scene. That name is Paula Raia.