Surprise time. Britain’s nicest record label Wee Pop takes something of a change of direction with Lê Almeida and is now looking back towards the kind of music that you would have heard on US College radio in the nineties. The cause of this bit of tiller swinging is Brazilian band Lê Almeida and the wind in their sails is their album “Mono Maçã“.
With as big a set of drums as the recording mini budget allowed, this compact and bijou band add a vaguely psychedelic slant on that Nirvana/Dinosaur Jr sound. So, that will tell you to expect a surfeit of fuzzed out guitars delivered some fairly heavyweight riffs with “Por favor não morra” sounding the most (ahem…) familiar. If you have attention deficit syndrome then you will be glad to know that there are several songs under the one minute mark and nothing whatsoever ending up at the seven minute mark. That, by the way, is probably the biggest problem with this album as way too many of the songs sound like unfinished or otherwise incomplete demos. There’s plenty of melody hidden in there however - "Jamais saberei dos UFOs" stands out here – but too many of the songs finish long before they have gone anywhere.
So, an interesting album but there is just too much in the way of incomplete work filling the gaps and I think a four track EP would better represent this band’s abilities.
As is the custom with this (very collectible) label, this release is limited to 160 hand crafted copies available from WeePOP! Records.