Gig: Os Mutantes

Os Mutantes / DeLeon

The Opera House. Friday, October 2, 2009.

Down to Queen and Broadview after work on a Friday evening, headed to the Opera House, one of my less-favourite venues. Too big to be intimate, too small to feel spacious, it's a begrudging destination for bands that are somewhere in that nebulous range of appeal between Lee's and the Phoenix, either of which I'd prefer. It's more tolerable when there's more elbow room, and the smallish crowd early on helped my disposition. A cool and rainy night brought to me another one of the small sadnesses that summer always papers over: you don't have to worry about what to do with your jacket at a gig when the weather's nice.

Came in without much info on opening act DeLeon, knowing only their "hook" — that they do modern-day versions of fifteenth Century Sephardic folk songs.¹ Without knowing that angle, one might just interpret their music as bouncy latin-ized pop — a vast territory of music with a lot of distinct subgenres that I lack pretty much any knowledge of. But regardless of language or style, the band did the first best thing an unfamiliar opening band could do in keeping things upbeat and bouncy. A Brooklyn-based trio consisting of Daniel Saks (guit, banjo) singing in Ladino, Hebrew and English, backed by bass, percussion and laptop beats. My main complaint with the band early on was that, with that laptop on stage, some of the songs felt more "canned" than they should be. And indeed, Saks would later explain that the band usually played as a five-piece including drummer and horn player, but was asked to slim down for touring purposes. A pity, as the drummer's absence was keenly felt, and could have really taken the songs to the next level. As things were, though, it was still a reasonably entertaining set. Saks, in a puffy, lacy shirt, had strong pipes and though things veered a few times towards Starbucks-compilation edgelessness, I had few complaints, even if I was not completely won over. That aforementioned upbeat bounciness will go a long way towards ensuring tolerance.

I came to see Os Mutantes more as a curiosity-seeker than a partisan. Over the years I came to them like I came to a lot of other bands that "received critical wisdom" has collectively accorded retroactive importance to. So I had a basic grounding and an appreciation of why they were important — anarchic hippies for truth and justice, forging a unique Tropicália synthesis of Brazilian rhythms and psychedelic rock. That the band — whose seminal lineup had broken up in the early '70's and had been defunct since the end of that decade — was around at all had been one of those pleasing second act, late-recognition success stories. A 2006 one-off reunion generated enough good reviews and momentum for the band to be re-formed on a more permanent basis, now leading to extensive touring and a new album. The current incarnation revolves around longtime singer/guitarist Sérgio Dias. Besides O.G. drummer Dinho Leme,² the rest of the band are replacements from a younger generation. The band rolled with dual keyboard players, guit, bass and Bia Mendes in the "Rita Lee" role as female vocal foil.

Dias took the stage in a purple cassock, a maple leaf pendant on a chain around his neck. Radiating joyful beneficence, he greeted the audience and commented "I hope you guys have a great trip" before launching into "Tecnicolor". This was followed a version of "El Justiciero" — with Dias tossing in some off-the-cuff Cancon lyrics, including naming the protector coming down from the mountains "Pierre Trudeau".

I felt some mild concern over the course of the first few songs — did they always sound so much like the Fifth Dimension? Was I wrong in remembering the band as leaner and more "rock" than this? Not that the songs weren't good, it just felt like the edge was a little blunted. After the first five songs in twenty-five minutes, I was wondering if I was going to have a good time. Fortunately, the band shifted gears and did a run of songs from their new album Haih or Amortecedor, starting with "Querida Querida", which had a bit more edge. It over-simpifies things a bit, but my enjoyment of the show was mostly proportional to the amount of fuzztone on Dias' guitar.

Introducing the songs from the new album, Dias was humble, expressing surprise that the old songs had outlasted the band and that the reunion happened because of the fans keeping the music alive — the new album being a gift back for the energy they'd experienced. For about three songs, the new material held up well, and perhaps because it was more "owned" by this lineup had a nice freshness to it. This section of the show was sorta subject to diminishing returns though, and by the fourth Haih track, "Bagdad Blues", which didn't really work, I was ready for the band to move along. Fortunately, a shift back to 1971's "Jardim Elétrico" was a revivifying jolt, and started the best stretch of the show, with the band really firing on all cylinders.

This fabulous stretch included "Top Top" and "Neurociência do Amor" from the new album and climaxed with "Balada do Louco" — so lovely that, had Paul McCartney written it, he could have bought the whole of Hampshire and put in a fair bid for Sussex. The main set concluded with a monster version — ten minutes plus — of megahit "Ando Meio Desligado" which had an appropriately lengthy jammy middle, complete with lyrical nods to "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". The band came out for a couple songs more, including a rocking "Bat Macumba".

I was rather surprised that I recognized most of the classic material, and the new stuff garnered mostly passing grades. It's probably inevitable that any band playing songs from their glory days more than three decades ago is going to be a bit softer in the middle than they were in the youth, and though there were a few moments of easy nostalgia karaoke, this was, in the end, a good enough show. Praise due to the mutants.

Listen to a track from this set here.

---

¹ The band's own claim of "Pre-Inquisition Melodies, post-modernized" has a certain charm to it.

² Dinho was the bit of grit in the oyster for this band. While everyone else was wearing glad-to-be-here grins, Dihno's expression was somewhere between stoic and grumpy as he occupied the role of no-frills Charlie Watts-esque beatkeeper. At the end of the show, when the band came out for the curtain call, arms linked shoulder-to-shoulder and bouncing up and down, he just stood off to the side, smiling politely.