Eu Vou Ser Como a Toupeira

For many listeners, the legend of Portuguese singer-songwriter and activist José Afonso rests on a run of beautiful, lightly experimental albums from the early 1970s. Eu Vou Ser Como A Toupeira (I Will Be Like A Mole) is the second in that run of albums. During this time, Afonso was inspired by the Brazilian Tropicalistas, and you can hear that in some of the wilder interruptions of his songs — the confused, layered mumbling that repeatedly disrupts “Sete fadas me fadaram,” for example, or the haunted wailings that drift under “O Avô Cavernoso,” the album’s stripped-back masterpiece. There’s a setting of Pessoa here, too, and a tribute to anti-fascist activist Dias Coelho; all knitted together by the brittle poetry of Afonso’s surrealist folk songs.