CéU

Just when you think that Brazil must surely have exhausted its supply of irresistibly jazzy, funky, sexy, soulful electro-pop singer-songwriters, someone like Céu (pronounced "say-you") comes along and makes you think that maybe that particular well is bottomless after all.

Her full name is Maria do Céu Whitaker Poças, but she goes by the simpler moniker CeU. It's a name that can be translated into English in a couple of subtly but significantly different ways. CéU means either "sky" or "heaven," depending on context, and either translation applies quite nicely in this case: think of her as "Sky" when you hear the soft blue clarity of her voice, or "Heaven" when one of her sweetly bubbling melodic hooks takes you by surprise and makes you shiver with delight.

It's CéU's voice that really grabs your attention and won't let go. On "Rainha," a jazzy and more conventionally Brazilian number, she delivers a beautifully cascading melody over rich, thick layers of horns and percussion, while on the drier and more bluesy "10 Contados" her voice whispers the melody softly and warmly into your ear with an almost unbearable sexiness. On every song, CéU croons with a warmth and sensuality that is much more interesting and complex than the warblings of the sex-kittens-of-the-month that perennially inhabit the American R&B charts; CéU sings as if she were imparting secrets. Her songs sound as if they're informed by life as it is really lived, in all of its emotional difficulty and complication, rather than by gauzy romantic illusions or sexpot posturing.

The album's most whimsical and charming moment comes on "O Ronco de Cuica," a celebration of the cuica, a Brazilian percussion instrument that looks like a drum and sounds like an agitated monkey or tropical bird. Although CéU carefully avoids the drum'n'bossa sound that is so much the rage in her native country these days, there are definite hints of junglism in both the drum sound and in the manipulated cuica samples that are layered throughout the track; a messy guitar part lurks in the background, hinting at an impending chaos that never quite takes over.

Samba, reggae, dub, electronica, love, heartbreak, chaos and sweet, sweet tunefulness – sounds like the perfect recipe for an irresistible album by a thrilling new talent. And so it is. —Courtesy Calabash Music