BRAZILIAN POP EXPERIMENTALIST BRINGS ACCLAIMED DEBUT ALBUM
TO MONTREAL JAN 30, 31 & TORONTO FEB 1
GRANDEZA OUT NOW ON BOILED RECORDS – LISTEN HERE
"Pure, blissful album of Brazilian-infuenced folk pop." - UNCUT
“Music to queer your daydreams by.” - Q
"Sessa has made his own thing: confident and hypnotic." - Relix
"Sessa’s melodies and arrangements are as good as any you’ll hear at the moment." - Aquarium Drunkard
"Cut from Veloso's mold and blessed with a flair for the intimate, enigmatic, and licentious." - New Yorker
"A fantastic stripped down love letter to Brazilian music." - Bandcamp
"A gorgeous captivating record through and through." - Light In The Attic
"A soothing, subdued close to the year." - The Guardian
"This is a discovery." - Vancouver Sun
Photo: Helena Wolfenson // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
Grandeza, the brilliant debut solo album from São Paulo musician Sessa, brought a beautiful and kaleidoscopic tint to the world, often in stark and resilient contrast to the prevalent landscape of 2019. An album about the natural gesture of love and the softness of the human body, Grandeza is a harmonious blend of nylon guitar and hand percussion, with lyrics on love in its many shapes and colours backed by an enchanting female choir and flourishes of spiritual jazz, earning Sessa comparisons to Leonard Cohen, Devendra Banhart, Caetano Veloso, and more. Sessa says, “I like to think that my music exists somewhere along the rituals that celebrate life. It’s a reminder that amongst all the pain, music comes to reaffirm the beauty in living.”
Today, carrying the momentum of 2019 best album accolades from the likes of Bandcamp (#20), Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide FM, UNCUT (8/10, #75), Q Magazine (4/5), and more, Sessa announces a fourteen-date North American winter tour that will reach both coasts of the US and Canada this February, including stops in Toronto and Montreal. The band’s charming performances have shared stages this year with veteran Austin post-rockers Explosions In The Sky on their 20th anniversary tour, and Japanese folk-cult icon Shintaro Sakamoto, as well as festival appearances at Desert Daze, FME, and more. Full tour dates below. Tickets on sale now.
WATCH “FLOR DO REAL” MUSIC VIDEO HERE
Sessa has long been a fixture of the American and Brazilian music scenes, known for his collaborations with Yonatan Gat and co-founding of acclaimed psych-rock group Garotas Suecas. Now, he shares the enchanting sensuality and singular beauty of his own musical vision. Grandeza points to new directions for Brazilian pop with a perfect balance of subtlety and euphoria that harmonizes its traditional and modern elements. The album displays a deep, minimalist, almost insinuated use of the rich textures and rhythms that define the songwriting history of Brazil.
Across Grandeza, Sessa’s songs are sung in Portuguese, with emotionally raw and sensual lyrics in the vain of Caetano Veloso, and the melodic flourishes of Tom Jobim and Arthur Verocai. However, the music gets a deliberate minimalist treatment rarely found in contemporary Brazilian music, more reminiscent of the bareness of Leonard Cohen, with touches of tropicália, and a collaboration with the free jazz ensemble Música de Selvagem that permeates the album with the cosmic elements of Pharoah Sanders and Moondog.
WATCH “TANTO” LIVE HERE
Written and recorded in multiple locations between São Paulo and New York during a nomadic period in Sessa’s life, the eleven songs in Grandeza portray different worlds of sound and poetry. The brilliance of the album is not only in its mastery of ambience, but in the fluidity of its vast musical horizon. From the psychedelic inflection of lead single “Flor do Real” through the gentle cacophony of album crescendo “Tanto”, Sessa creates a perfect balance of the album’s elements, articulating its melodic richness with the confluence of Música de Selvagem and Grandeza’s all-female choir, whose appearances fill the record with moments of remarkable beauty and experimental freedom.
Grandeza was released in June by Toronto based record label Boiled Records, who this year also put out the Polaris Music Prize Short List-nominated Le Mal by FET.NAT.
TOUR DATES – TICKETS HERE
Jan 28 - Brooklyn NY - The Sultan Room
Jan 29 - Easthampton MA - New City Brewery
Jan 30 - Montréal QC - Taverne Tour @ Aux 33 Tours
Jan 31 - Montréal QC - Taverne Tour @ Casa del Popolo
Feb 01 - Toronto ON - The Baby G
Feb 02 - Detroit MI - Trinosophes
Feb 04 - Chicago IL - Beat Kitchen
Feb 05 - Milwaukee WI - Cactus Club
Feb 07 - Seattle WA - Conor Byrne
Feb 08 - Bellingham WA - Firefly
Feb 09 - Portland OR - Doug Fir
Feb 11 - Davis CA - The Domes
Feb 12 - San Francisco CA - The Chapel
Feb 13 - Los Angeles CA - Zebulon
GRANDEZA TRACK LISTING
1. Grandeza
2. Tesão Central
3. Gata Mágica
4. Flor do Real
5. Sangue Bom
6. Dez Total
7. Infinitamente Nu
8. Orgia
9. Tanto
10. Língua Geral
11. Toda Instância do Prazer