Gal Costa [Cinema Olympia]

Released

Only a few months separate Gal Costa’s two albums from 1969, but while the prior featured psychedelic flourishes, the latter album is wholly doused in acid. The album might serve as Tropicália’s full-throated riposte to what was emanating from San Francisco at the time, blowing the likes of Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead, and Jefferson Airplane out of the water. With Lanny’s flamethrower guitar work front and center and Gal’s sweet vocals turning into a jungle cat roar, the album ranges from hard rock blasts (see opener “Cinema Olympia”) to the buzzing MENA stomper “Tuareg.” “Objeto Sim, Objeto Não” might be the defining psychedelic song of the era: it evolves from Echoplexed groans and feedback into a swinging big band number before melting back down into primordial noise, with Gal strutting through the sonic madness in her unflappable style.

Andy Beta