It wasn’t easy for the sunlit fuzz-funk music of Tropicalismo to make it all the way to 1970. The late ‘60s sent the movement’s major players through everything from musical game show appearances to military dictatorship-imposed imprisonment and exile (key players like Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, for example), all with minimal public support. When the ‘70s finally hit, rock was still finding its footing, even though it was becoming more generally accepted by Brazil as a whole. While this summary skips over volumes of details, it gives an idea of where the country was positioned musically in 1970: finally ready to accept rock with moderately open arms and prove to the rest of the world that they could rock with the best of them.
Rita Lee, of course, already had. She’d bested most of her Anglo counterparts on two late-‘60s albums with Os Mutantes, lacing her bandmates’ heavy sub-equatorial psych with the perfect compliment of larking alto, as well as a dark opus, A Divina Comedia, with the group that same year. Having already proved herself in that arena (she’s now known as “The Grandmother of Rock” in her native Brazil) was perhaps the reason Lee decided to try something different on Build Up.
Though fellow Mutants Arnoldo Baptista and Sergio Dias both contribute to the album, those looking to hear Lee’s voice in the midst of their drug-induced guitar fuzz-outs have come to the wrong place. The first notes of this record come in the form of string arrangements on opener “Sucesso, Aqui Vou Eu,” which, at first glance, more closely resembles a Petula Clark Broadway number than anything in the Tropicalia canon. Hearing it for the first time, it’s hard to believe you’re listening to the same woman who sang vocals on a song which translates to “Hail, Lucifer” that same year -- and even harder to believe that you’re actually kind of digging it. It may be ‘40s nightclub at a glance, but Lee was never one to walk someone else’s trail, especially at this point in her career. A closer listen reveals stylistic sparks taken from all corners of the globe and plenty of twists lying just below the surface. This song foreshadows stylistically what’s to come on many tracks throughout the rest of the album. Most aren’t really the psych-rock jams Lee was doing concurrently with Os Mutantes, but rather conventional numbers taken and tweaked in ways as to make them totally unique.
From there, Lee dives into “Calma,” shifting the mood from ocean breeze to high-speed chase at will, again keeping it all in a jazz-lounge framework. Side one continues turning the string and horn vibe on its head, while side two contains most of the ‘rockers.’ Given the context, the ‘conventional’ tracks actually end up being the least straightforward on the album. Many notable rock figures have gone the way of ‘conventional’ music in efforts to prove that they’re capable of more than one style, but this album is one of the best examples of being able to do that without sacrificing what made the earlier music notable to begin with. All the intriguing aspects of Lee’s music are present here, just in different forms. Lee continues to keep it interesting on side two with “Hulla-Hulla,” which is Hawaiian from the name down. Yes, Hawaiian. Call it cheesy, but it holds up to the rest of the album instrumentally with its strong humming-it-for-days-after-you-hear-it factor. Beatles cover, “And I Love Him,” gives Lee an excuse to channel her inner Janis, something she’s been known to do on Mutantes tracks (see: “Meu Refrigerador Não Funciona”). It’s tolerable, but given that Lee has always been the better of the two both vocally and stylistically, it’s regrettable to see her feeling the need to go the drunken-blues route. Cloak-and-dagger number “Prisioneira Do Amor” leads into the album’s closer, a straight-ahead rock number chock full of electric guitar, walking bass, and wah pedal.
The album is full of great rhythms and instrumental work, but when a vocalist from a previous musical outfit does a solo album, the vocal quality is sure to be dissected. Under any microscope, Lee’s voice holds up to the challenge. If the album does have a few flaws, vocals aren’t one of them. Her voice keeps even the less interesting tracks afloat, gliding through all the right notes while always managing to stay somewhere between a moan and a whisper. It’s sexy, it’s ear-candy, it’s Rita Lee in her prime.
It will be difficult for most of us who first learned about Brazillian music through Os Mutantes to resist comparing the two incarnations of her music instead of just listening to it. Indeed, it may come as a disappointment to many fans that Lee appears to have traded whatever hallucinogens she was taking with Os Mutantes for a pleasant glass of wine this time around. But this shouldn’t be cause for dismay -- these are two separate sounds entirely. It wasn’t a Mutantes album for a reason, after all. Build Up was never trying to send us to another universe, only to make us enjoy this one a little bit more.