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Amelancholic air of fantasy swirls around the crisp pop beats that form the backbone of Noir Brésil, electropop artist Yndi Ferreira’s first album under her own mononym. Formerly Dream Koala, Yndi – based in Berlin, raised in Paris, with roots in Brazil – draws on her past, present, and future in creating the album’s luscious soundscape. It’s a mix of Afro-Brazilian-influenced percussion, mellow guitar, dramatic piano, streamlined electronics, and her winsome voice. This vulnerable instrument serves as the album’s incredibly poignant emotional core from start to finish. Noir Brésil may be moody, self-produced pop, but it still feels expensive, extravagant, huge; it has an atmosphere on a planetary scale and inescapable thematic and sonic gravity.
Weighty though it is, though, Noir Brésil moves in many ways over its 13 tracks. It begins in slow, fluid motion, the solemn keys of “Ailleurs” laying the foundation for Yndi’s voice to dance, twist, and echo, lyrics of waves, tides, and horizons rising and falling over stormy drums. The staccato beats of “Noir Brésil” are fiery and entrancing; percussion and classical guitar move together in airy flows on “Amazona”. Dizzying “Novo Mundo” might be the album’s most exciting piece, laced with gliding strings that lift the images Yndi conjures of hope and rebirth in both French and Portuguese, native tongues that offer her new and natural poetic avenues throughout Noir Brésil.
