Racional

Tim Maia found his way to "Racional" through an unlikely path: the Brazilian soul king, previously devoted to pleasure and excess, encountered the Universo em Desencanto religious movement and produced two albums of cosmic spiritual funk before eventually leaving the sect. "Racional" sits inside this strange, radiant period. The production is thick and churning, driven by a bass line that sounds like a heartbeat amplified, brass arrangements that arrive in waves rather than stabs, the whole thing suggesting a man who has discovered something he cannot keep to himself. Maia's voice — always massive, capable of extraordinary tenderness or arena-filling power — here operates at full spiritual conviction, the lyrics preaching a doctrine of self-knowledge and cosmic awareness in the unmistakable vocabulary of 1970s soul. There is something both sincere and surreal about it: Brazilian funk music as sermon, the dancefloor as church. Whatever one thinks of the ideology, the music is undeniable. It plays best loud, preferably at a volume where the bass physically registers in the chest.