Fred Astaire - Lucy and The Popsonics

By Rodrigo Levino

Three years after the successful launch of 'The fable (or farce?) of two electropandas',
debut album that garnered praise from specialized critics and made possible small
tours in the United States, Canada, Europe and the lineup for the Planeta Terra festival
2007, the Brasilian duo Lucy & The Popsonics release 'Fred Astaire' (Monstro Discos).
The epithet-cliché 'mature' is inescapable for the record. The farce cited as irony in the debut
does not stand up even as a joke in 'Fred Astaire', as it contains what guarantees the consolidation
of the duo's career: safer musicians, better produced arrangements, even more
ironic and humorous, a flesh-and-blood drummer who together with Lucy gives even more
weight to the band's performance, in addition to the excellent company of John Ulhôa, producer of
work. The sound elements are the same as usual and the house makes good use of rock
electropunk and allows for the unusual, like the country sampler that opens the album in
‘Multitasking’ and the version of ‘Refuse/Resist’, by Sepultura.
It's a mature record too because in three years Pil's life (guitars and samplers) and
Fernanda (bass and vocals) has changed substantially. There is a marriage between an album and
another, some public contests, more than a hundred concerts and a few thousand
kilometers crossing the country and two continents to perform shows. The reflection of
transformations can be seen in the letters. The inspiring elements are no longer just the
cruelly ironized stereotypes (‘The sound of the mp3 improves on the K7 / On the A side of the tape fits the B
do Indietracks/ The best bands are the opening ones / The coolest scene is the indiefolk of
Albania’, BiffBang Pop) and also turned to life as a couple, the difficulty of carrying on
the career and schedules of the bureaucratic job (‘I live in a model / I feel like a mouse
white / I'm an experiment / I work in a bank', Fred Astaire).
The result has a hint of melancholy, but it soon fades with sarcasm and mid-set.
there's someone asking in an inside out love song 'why don't you die?',
preceding 'Ziggy', one of the best tracks on the disc and an ode to David Bowie, whose lyrics sum up the
saga of an obsessive fan as a small science fiction script, which incidentally comes well to
come in handy with the ethereal elements of synths.
Just over 40 minutes of 'Fred Astaire' comes to an end with 'Cosmonaut' and 'Eight-bits'.
The one, burlesque and mocking, refers to the Russians and their space race and toasts with a
catchy and melodic chorus. The icing on the cake, however, is 'Eight-bits'. It's impossible to stay
unscathed by Fernanda's whispered and provocative voice asking her to 'use two other notes / and
sing that you love me in eight bits'. You are likely to answer, hypnotized, and only then give in
says it's just a delicious record like the vocalist's voice, dancing like a beat
full of good style references and safe as maturity is capable of.