“I wanted to make a record that reflected how I feel life,” says London-based Cibelle of her new album, The Shine of Dried Electric Leaves. “I wanted it to be dark and sunny at the same time, intense and delicate, filled with childhood memories. I also wanted it to be a communal record, where everyone would check their egos at the door and pour their hearts into it.”
On her second release, the singer/songwriter comes out with a record that is accessible but also intensely personal and a bit neurotic. She plays most of the instruments herself with the assistance of Mike Lindsay (from U.K. folktronica act Tunng) and Apollo Nove (the innovative producer/artist from São Paulo), who co-produced the album and contributed on some of the original songs. If that’s not enough for street cred, Parisian mixer Yann Arnaud and Devendra Banhardt also contributed.
“Working with Apollo Nove is like going back to the school playground: you just let go. You listen to crazy music and then record the sound of a microphone being scraped against the carpet,” she explains. “I love him from the bottom of my heart; he’s incredible.”
Cibelle’s take on Brazilian music might sound strange to purists—she mixes samba and pop in a rather eclectic manner. For example, “Mad Man Song” employs spoons being hit against each other and extraneous vocals with an electronic backbeat. On “Arrête Lá, Menina,” the ever-present Seu Jorge contributes a supporting vocal that nearly functions as the song’s soul.
“I had heard that Jorge was in town, so I told him—as I did with many other friends—that I’d be at Apollo’s all day, so if he just wanted to join the party, all he needed to do was show up,” she says. “He came in at around 10 p.m. and stayed there until eight the next morning.”
The album also showcases her original material alongside a handful of covers with an evident Europop influence. Her take on Caetano Veloso’s English-language “London London” has more of a samba-inflected, upbeat feeling than the composer’s melancholy 1970 recording, written while a political exile in England. This new offering is a tribute to both the psychedelic and Tropicalia movements of the late ’60s. She also does great justice to Jobim’s “Por Toda A Minha Vida.” The tune was popularized by Elis Regina in the 1970s, and it became a trademark for her throughout her career—she would often break into tears when she performed it. Cibelle delivers it in a eerily poignant fashion that causes goose bumps.
“The covers were chosen because they go into my heart,” she says. “I fall in love with them, and also because they reflect something in my life that the writer could express better than I could.”
Sept. 22. Joe’s Pub, 425 Lafayette St. (betw. Astor Pl. & E. 4th St.),
212-254-1263; 7:30, 9:30, $20; September 23. Mercury Lounge, 217 E. Houston St. (at Ave. A), 212-260-4700; 11:30, $16.
