I met the music of Luís Pucarinho at the time of his second solo album, “Orgânica mente humana”. They had already left behind the Sons de Cá, their group project, and also the debut in its name and long-duration with “Na Rua Amarela”, of 2011.
But, from 2015 to the present day, I have tried to follow the music of this singer-songwriter now closer to rock well founded in the Portuguese traditions and those of his native Alentejo. Seeing him live was indeed the confirmation of his rather confessional writing, such is sometimes the despoilment in his delivery of the songs he presents to us. Six years after “Saia rodada”, his third solo album, Luís Pucarinho brings us the new chapter of his musical adventure: “Só as Perguntas Abrem Portas”.
And there is indeed restlessness to rodeos in this new album of the singer-songwriter born in Alcácer do Sal – this since the first track, “Animals”, where it tells us “I don’t want to live anymore to cover a void / And sink the being”. We see here the daily dissected by someone who does not stay “to see the life of the window”, but who feels it in the flesh and that transports it to his songs in a shameless way. Luís Pucarinho questions the world and questions himself as a creative entity that is part of it, involving us in an embrace in which he reminds us that “we are only people”. But he, who is not “square or articulate” in his opinion, as he sings in “Mãe“, does not fear to show his frailties as a human being. It is one of his “fortresses” as a singer-songwriter, inserting himself in a lineage that comes from the medieval jograis and that followed by the 20th-century folk singers who showed their soul in what they sang while putting fingers in the wounds of society.
“I just wanted to have the solution / solve everything from scratch /but there are people who review how many / will be left with nothing,” sings Luís Pucarinho in “Janela”. It will not be your case, since, despite the note of some disenchantment that transmutes in songs like “Letter to my country”, it is also him to point out that “there is always a good day to say / Love without hesitation starts thinking / And adds poetry to write”. His poetry jumps from words to music, living also of complicities like those that connect him with the musicians Zé Peps or Mário Lopes, who already presented us duets with Jorge Benvinda (from Virgem Suta) or Duarte (one of the most notable Fadistas of this generation). After all, “how many things of mine are only yours”? Or is it that Luís Pucarinho is an alter-ego of us all in this 2024 Portugal?…
João Carlos Callixto
Lineup “Só as perguntas abrem portas”
- ANIMAIS
- AVESTRUZES
- MÃE
- MEDUSAS
- JANELA
- MONOGÂMICO
- CARTA AO MEU PAÍS
- OS OUTROS
- PALAVRAS TUAS
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