Caetano Veloso: A Foreign Sound

The latest album from Brazilian legend Caetano Veloso, A Foreign Sound casts a set of American songs in a sound suitable for the morning newspaper—both in the "warm bath" sense made famous by writer Tom Wolfe and in a subtextual way ripe for those seeking hidden angles in ostensibly straight reportage. In one sense, it's a swooning, beautiful tribute to a diverse group of American songwriters who have little in common. In a subtler and more muddled sense, it holds out hints of Veloso's past as a musician with protest in his bones.

Veloso made his name in the '60s as part of the tropicalia movement, which fused bossa-nova roots with radical rock under the leering eye of a Brazilian dictatorship. Veloso sounds classically demure and deferential on A Foreign Sound, but it's hard not to suspect more pointed motives in a tribute roster that jumps from Cole Porter and Irving Berlin to Bob Dylan and Kurt Cobain. Thinking through motives, however, proves difficult in covers that stir more than stew. Kicking off with "The Carioca," a song written for the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movie Flying Down To Rio, the album announces its sparse, dry approach from the start. In his take on Nirvana's "Come As You Are," Veloso sidles up to a muttered snarl. But more common is the lush sentiment suffusing Porter's "So In Love" and "Love For Sale," presented in a bath of strings and an a cappella vacuum, respectively. The stately classics gleam; Veloso sounds positively enamored with the tight rhymes in "Manhattan," goosing his elocution in words that twist and tumble down ballroom stairs.

Less-than-obvious choices suggest more pointed interpretations. Morris Albert's easy-listening anthem "Feelings" gets drowned in treacly strings, while "Jamaica Farewell" ("Sad to say, I'm on my way…") sounds clownish and naïve in Veloso's mouth. It's hard to make clear sense of his selections—including "Love Me Tender," "Body And Soul," Bob Dylan's "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)," and a brief seethe by no-wave rock band DNA—but Veloso sounds like he's literally living in songs that can be read or browsed by head and heart.