Arto Lindsay: Prize

David Byrne gets a lot of credit for the current Brazilian-pop revival; after all, he made several albums and compilations easily available through his Luaka Bop label. Yet former avant-skronker Arto Lindsay in some ways beat Byrne to the punch with his early Brazil-meets-downtown recordings, both as a member of Ambitious Lovers and producer for the likes of Caetano Veloso, Vinicius Cantuaria, and Gal Costa. Of course, Lindsay has an in: Though born in New York, he was raised in Brazil. In fact, a lot of what passed for improvised gibberish when Lindsay fronted the seminal late-'70s No Wave act DNA turns out to have been Portuguese all along. Lindsay's most recent solo albums have explicitly embraced the bossa nova: Prize is the fourth in a remarkable series of releases (after The Subtle Body, Mundo Civilizado, and Noon Chill) that combine traditional Brazilian music with the more urban sounds of New York City. (It's also his first for Ani DiFranco's Righteous Babe label.) Here, Bahian drummers thump around programmed hip-hop beats ("Tone"), gentle guitars, strings, and horns mingle with occasional bursts of noise ("The Prize"), and electronic music rubs shoulders with acoustic folk ("Prefeelings"). Holding it all together as usual is Lindsay's own placid voice, cooing poetic lyrics in both English and Portuguese. These efforts to bridge North and South America continue to evince spectacularly beautiful results, proving that contemporary music need not focus entirely on tension to succeed, but also on sweet creative release.