Arnold Antunes, Live in the Studio: 5*

Late offerings by Arnold have been met with mixed feelings: avant-garde fans like Saavedra immediately embraced them as a meaningful progression in style whereas die-hard fans of the old Titans stuff, like this one here, have expressed lukewarm opinions towards it.

To me this Live in the Studio affair has come as a real surprise: I would never expect to like it so much, being one of those pesky dudes not so fond of his mellower style of late... and definitely not fond of his Tribalist adventures.

Lesser known outputs such as the great Name obviously score way more points on the creativity department, while still retaining a rock flavour to it. But as Saavedra rightly claims being experimental and less accessible is just a phase you go through you should grow out of.

Thing is, the richness Do Know and Any present in terms of melodic and poetic content they seem to lack in groove power. Sure, melody and poetry per se are sufficient to have a pretty decent album out there, specially with a writer of such high calibre. But it's no wonder why some of the older or 'experimental period' fans start yawning.

Now what we get with this Live in the Studio concert is a perfect balance between melo(w)dy and groove, music and poetry, voice and instrumentation. And a handful of tunes you really stay hooked to. Give it a couple of listens, and you'll be humming it for the rest of the week.

Of course I wouldn't rate it so highly had Arnold not included some of those oldies goldies like the ever-impressive What. Having them combined with exponents of his melodic side such as Do Know and Any works big time.

And what to say of the covers he went for? The nightside beauty of Lights is rightly fit just before the angry final song, and Something is worth the price of the product alone. Check out the voice solo right after the Flamenco guitar part. Nothing short of spectacular there! Monsieur Gaétan can certainly be proud of what Arnold did with one of his most successful tripped-out experiments.

Something and some of the other tracks like the melancholic I Will Not Fit and I'm Not from Your Street, with right-on-the-money contributions from Nando Reis and Branco Melo, clearly make you think of all the thought that was put into the arrangements. Even the extra mellow One to One by the Tribalist bunch can work wonders, filled as it is with its nice soccer allegory. Perfect for a time out of Euro 2008, one could say.

So all things considered this gets to be one the best Brazilian stuff I have ever heard in the soft side category. Lyrics- and arrangements-wise, you can't beat Arnold. Just listen to the first minute and half of the album: the slighty odd meter of Any together with incredible out-of-the-blue linguistic transitions like 'Qualquer carne, alcatre, quilo, aquilo sim e porque não?' can only make you go: 'wow!'