CD Reviews

Cibelle

The Shine of Dried Electric Leaves | Six Degrees

By MATTHEW GASTEIER | January 9, 2007

3.0 Stars

A Brazilian singer now based in London, Cibelle has found her own voice on her second disc for the electrolounge-leaning Six Degrees label. Unlike her Cibelle debut, which stuck to a more trad world-music bossa nova script, The Shine of Dried Electric Leaves takes an abstract approach to down-tempo. With a broad sonic and sample palette, her original compositions float in and out of structured verses and choruses to reveal shimmering veneers and brief, vivid moments of melody. Along the way, she covers Tom Waits, Antonio Carlos Jobim, and Caetano Veloso’s beautiful “London, London,” weaving them into a multi-lingual whole. Despite this loose construction and arrangements that include clicking machines and hovering street sounds as often as plucked guitars and weeping strings, she makes the album a relaxing and emotional — rather than an intellectual — experience. Perhaps it’s her sultry voice; perhaps it’s the sun-soaked production. Either way, The Shine of Dried Electric Leaves is a modest triumph, a disc hungry for adventure that doesn’t forget its chill-out roots. Sexsmith fans love nothing more than using their hero as an example of what grown-ups who dig smart, sensitive pop should be listening to instead of Rob Thomas or Train. On his first album for Kiefer Sutherland’s new label, it’s not hard to hear why the Toronto-based folk-popster so often gets lost in the adult-contempo shuffle. His handsome melodies unfurl at their own unhurried pace, and his distinctive singing voice — a sort of quavery, half-swallowed gurgle — doesn’t do much to stoke any soulful-beefcake fantasies. But give Time Being time to be: in gorgeous, understated ballads like “Reason for Our Love,” he strikes mellow singer-songwriter gold whose old-time charms are worth savoring slowly.

Related: West coasting, ’Round the outside, Jackie Greene, More

Topics: CD Reviews , Tom Waits, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Caetano Veloso, More

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Cibelle, Songs from The Shrine of Dried Electric Leaves

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