Caetano Veloso & Ivan Sacerdote
Released
Released in 2020 to little fanfare, this live set retools old Caetano Veloso songs for an incredibly intimate setting – acoustic guitar, voice, and the clarinet of Salvador, Bahia’s Ivan Sacerdote. It is a quietly astonishing performance that draws its power from restraint, something you may not be expecting if you’ve lived with some of Veloso’s bolshier, more legendary moments, songs like “Tropicalia.” But he’s always excelled at a kind of cosmic intimacy; here, everything’s dialled down to quiet, Sacerdote’s poetic interjections framing Veloso’s melodies in beautiful, gently unexpected ways. It’s an object lesson in revisiting songs to access their emotional core.