Critic's evaluation
Two years after the release of the EP Espero Que Você Entenda, the group from São Paulo Flerte Flamingo resumes its studio work and announces Truques Velhos Para Cachorros Novos. The work adds to the discography of five other full-lengths already announced by the band.
Footsteps are heard above the wooden floor. Silence. Audible sounds of flipping through some kind of publication are perceived in a way that precedes a kind of funeral and melancholic waltz coming from Felipe Vaqueiro's mandolin. Imprinting a dive in the flamenco aesthetic from a weeping melodic interpretation, Leonardo Passovi presents his sweet and saddened timbre that contrasts with the manipulative and imagetic floral and sunny ambience of the melody. With metallic notes, his vocal overflights bring to Folha De Jornal an ultra romantic plot. A scenario whose character has set out to become deeply in love with someone who has not nurtured the same feeling. Yet conformation comes in timidly clear horizons that inform satisfaction, a means of proving to oneself that one is in control of the situation, that it was by one's own conscious choice to lose oneself in love with someone who did not taste the same spell. And in this process, Folha De Jornal becomes even more dramatic and tearful with the insertion of instruments such as the Fernando Tavares' mellotron and metallophone, which together give even more vivacity to the feelings expressed by the disappointed and helpless character.
Like the comfort of velvet caressing the face in a comforting state of tranquillity, the song comes with its soft, floral and contagious melody. From an interesting MPB whose sonority makes it seem as if it is a mental and unconscious dialogue, Calma, Carolina is almost an interlude that seems to work as a second reality of Folha De Jornal, or, even, its continuation. Still with a romantic background, but with a certain desperation to maintain the existing relationship, the character is willing to do whatever it takes to offer harmony to the relationship. And that is how the scales come into play to provide textures that at least try to escape the excessive sweetness of Calma, Carolina, a soft and intoxicating song.
The velvet of the Fender Rhodes sonar appears in pink tones in the landscape under construction. However, what happens is the transition to a more swinging groove with bass playing. Bringing with it a more cadenced pop, the instrument is accompanied by a soft guitar that inserts in the melody a touch of MPB in a fresher tone. In this aspect, a contagious samba emerges bringing sunny cracks that invite the listener to take a few steps on the beach to feel the sea breeze. And it is thus, with such softness, that Calo Na Garganta curiously brings a plot whose knot in the throat is well represented by the melody. A knot of unresolved or unexposed things, but whose predominant feeling is longing and the desire to be together. Still, the melancholy of uncertainty and disappointment hangs over the atmosphere, even if there is still a sincere essence of reconciliation.
He is short on time, but not on experience. Truques Velhos Para Cachorros Novos suggests three views on love in three situations that provide totally different experiences. There is the pure passion of first sight, the attempt at permanence, and the experience of the feeling of unresolved issues that have surfaced at the end of a journey.
This is how Flerte Flamingo proposes to the listener a linear trajectory about love and passion. Like a novel with beginning, middle, and end, it ends with that flea behind the ear that suggests a kind of restlessness for the doubt of whether love is really over or if it is just a period of equalization of feelings.
With a floral MPB that sometimes merges into flamenco with Latin-European aromas, Pedro 'Takino' Padilha provides Truques Velhos Para Cachorros Novos with a clean and easy-to-taste sound. A menu that, in the end, while there is still that tasty sweetness on the palate, the sudden end creates the expectation of new experiences.
Closing the technical scope comes the cover art. Signed by João Nuci, it brings several loose drawings forming a circle around the EP's nomenclature. Although simple, it is exactly this circle of elements that mix maturation and love that suggests the relationship cycle: with discoveries, falls, successes, and maturation.
Released on 11/18/ 2022 in an independent way, Truques Velhos Para Cachorros Novos is the soundtrack to the life of a relationship. Or, as the title suggests, it is the tricks of a past generation used by the new bloodline to keep the relationship alive. Simply put, the EP is an experimentation of all the emotions experienced during a passion.
