Floating on the indie pop-poetic planet, singer-songwriter Leticia Maura signs the eight compositions on Try Me. She seals a powerful generational encounter with the young Vivian Kuscynski, music producer and creator of all the arrangements.
The launch concert will be on December 2nd, at 10 pm, at Teatro da Comuna, in Lisbon.
From dancing on a blue dance floor to night surfing on a silver beach, with a stop at Mount Fuji. So singer-songwriter Leticia Maura attracts her audience to the mysterious and seductive universe of her new album, Try Me, recorded in April this year at NStudio, in Lisbon. Floating on the indie pop-poetic planet, the multi-artist – in addition to being a singer and songwriter, is a writer and poet – signs the eight compositions for her independent album to be released on November 24th, in physical (vinyl) and digital formats. The vinyl will be on sale for €17 on the Bandcamp platform or at the Louie Louie store, in Lisbon.
“Try Me, a single already released, is an invitation for someone to stay with me, but not only that. It is also a conversation with myself, a “self-invitation” to try myself too and explore new creative paths in the idea of marrying poetry and music. And it is with pleasure that I embrace electronic sounds because they can take me to a very emotional, intense place. I feel very whole in this new album”, defines Leticia.
Urban contemplation, seduction, restlessness, forbidden love (to assume, but not to feel), the busy daily lives of women on a triple journey: in the lyrics, always written before the melody is born, poetry is on full display. More electronic than the previous album, Poetic Collage, the new work surprises with a koto solo (Japanese string instrument) in Mount Fuji Song, an apotheotic set of strings in Winter Surfer and the infectious groove of a bass in Nervous.
“I have always defined my music as cinematic, visual. When I sing I see the images in front of me, different each time, but always as part of a plot, a plot, as if each song were a script.”
Try Me has compositions in English and Portuguese and seals a powerful generational meeting with the young producer Vivian Kuscynski, just 20 years old, music producer and creator of all arrangements, who has already produced works for Alice Caymmi and Bruno Capinam, in addition to having performed musical direction for Jão and his compositions recorded by Junior Lima and Pabllo Vittar.
The launch concert for Try Me will be on December 2nd, at 10 pm, at Teatro da Comuna, in Praça de Espanha, and will feature musicians Maurício Caruso on guitar and Nelson Ferreira on cello. Tickets cost between €10 and €15 (the public decides the amount they will pay), with reservations via email at tryme.concerto@gmail.com.
Previously, Leticia Maura recorded two albums – Movimento (2007) and Lá (2008) – with the former electronic duo São Paris, on the FCom label, owned by French DJ Laurent Garnier. Alongside musician Thomas Ferrière, the duo “São Paris” came up with an original proposal at the time: the fusion of sophisticated texts with electronic sounds.
Since this time, visual arts were already a fundamental part of the albums, defined as “beautiful objects” created by visual artists – something that Leticia maintained in her solo albums released later.
The duo broke up in 2009 and Leticia chose to dedicate herself to writing and composition, moving away from the stage until 2017. During this period, she published Casa 12, a work of poetic prose in which she says that poetry has been present in her life since childhood. Currently, it publishes a monthly newsletter illustrated by the artist Carla Cavalcante, creator of collages, covering themes linked to music, creative feelings and poetry, and is preparing two works to be released in 2024, one of poetry and one of poetic prose.
“About my creative process, I’ve never written a song starting with the melody, it’s always with the lyrics… in general I see a scene, a poetic image that inspires me and then a phrase begins to emerge, a sequence of ideas, in short, a poem”, ends.
On the album, it is worth highlighting the title song Try Me, which is the voice of a free person who invites someone to live a moment, without thinking about anything else, in a challenge about our ability to live without fear or guilt. The next song, Pista Azul, invites the listener to dance and brings an explicit message about gender – an issue that the author embraces. In the track Pink Hair, the lyrics say that she has a Patti Smith book in her hand because the artist is a great source of inspiration for the author (Poetic Collage, the title song of the previous album, is dedicated to Patti Smith). Mount Fuji surprises those who listen: to the electronic arrangement a koto was added, an ancient Japanese instrument played by a master, which has a beautiful sound. Segunda-feira is a hymn of love for the feminine daily life of a mother and worker. From the time the alarm clock rings until the night, she describes the rush, effort and secret dreams of a woman, are not always fulfilled. Also noteworthy is Winter Surfer, an ode to surfing, to the creatures that challenge the waves and make love to them at the same time, composed in a very cold late afternoon in Costa da Caparica, during a spectacular sunset.
ABOUT LETICIA MAURA
Leticia Maura was born in São Paulo, Brazil, where she studied Journalism. She began her professional life at the TodaModa supplement, from the now-defunct Shopping News newspaper, but soon moved to Paris. There, she worked for twenty years as a journalist at RFI-Rádio França Internacional. In 2017, she decided to exchange the world of breaking news for music and started living between Lisbon and the French capital. She published two books of poetry, Espelho eu (Ed.Massao Ohno) and Poemas de Candeia (JS), and Casa 12, in poetic prose, published by Cia. Das Letras.
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