A DIVINA COMÉDIA OU ANDO MEIO DESLIGADO

Hello! I'm Gabriela... and.. I'm Brazilian!! (that's way I am voting in this cd!!...) I was trying to find mutantes' mp3s... I love Rita Lee still today (with her solo) and i really thing the Mutante was a great part of a music revolution here in Brazil! It's very interesting and an excellent addition!! If you have an opportunity to listen to it or even listen to any of the singers that did our 60's different with the popular brazilian music I am sure you will enjoy it! Good luck and thank you...

Gabi

"A Divina Comédia ou Ando Meio Desligado" is the most complete Mutantes' album and the most revolutionary. every element in popular music receives a anarch and irreverent treatment of the Mutantes' cosmovision. now, as a rock'n roll band, with the official addmition of Liminha (bass) and Dinho (drums), Rita Lee, Sérgio Dias and Arnaldo Baptista were in their highest performance. a must-have album.

The Os Mutante's psychedelic tradition was much abandoned in "A Divina Comedia ou Ando Meio Desligado". This is more a progressive-earlier-Beatles rock album than a psychedelic one and the band lost much of originality with it. Thus, maybe that's the most audible album to the ones that are used to hear bands like Pink Floyd etc. Although, it's still a great album which I may outstand "Ave, Lúcifer" as the best song since it mantains the psychedelic atmosphere of the previous albums. As a drumer, I also like the drum solo in "Oh! Mulher Infiel".

Good but not in the same level of the two previous albums.

Unbalanced; it mixes good songs with others not so good.

Tracks 'Ando meio desligado', 'Ave Lucifer', 'Meu refrigerador não funciona', 'Hey Boy' and 'Oh! Mulher infiel' are worthy.

The version for the classical seresta (Brazilian serenade) 'Chão de estrelas' (Floor of stars) did not work well. The attempt to make fun with the dramatic lyrics resulted poor.

Minus 1.5-star for the weaker songs and minus 0.5-star for the 'Chão de estrelas' disaster. Total: 3.

One curiosity: 'Ando meio desligado' supposedly a love song became the "anthem" of the Brazilians hemp-users. The lyrics help: 'I am partially spaced out/Not even feeling my feet on the ground/I look and I see nothing/I don't want you to want me' (free translation).

Third album of this Brazilian band which developed some good arrangements and some fine psychedelia during their second album.

This mood is expressed in the very good opening song "Ando Meio Desligado". It can really be compared to what the genre produced some years ago already in Europe.

Most songs sounds very much outdated and childish. "Quem Tem Medo de Brincar de Amor" could have been the soundtrack of a TV sequence about the middle sixties.

Of course I can't judge the lyrics since my knowledge of Portuguese is fairly low. But I have rated albums in Polish with five stars, so this is not the problem. The band ralso reproduces some Fab Four related material with "Ave, Lucifer" for instance. Very much Pepper's oriented.

And the innocent and weak "Disculpe, Baby" won't change anything to my judgment. Strangely enough, I didn't expect anything great from "Meu Refrigerador Não Funciona" (my fridge is not working). With such a title I was expecting the worse but I have to say that is by far my favorite track from this album.

It features gorgeous keyboards fully Procol Harum oriented (again not very original) and the vocal performance from Rita is really fantastic (I am not convinced about the male ones). A heavy piece of music which is truly captivating.

The contrary of the childish and almost doo-wop "Hey Boy". Very much fifties oriented.

Some originality present in their previous work "Mutantes" is totally absent here. If one excepts a couple of good songs, this album sounds rather flat. Jazzy ("Preciso Urgentemente Encontrar Um Amigo") or traditional ("Chão de Estrelas"), none of these songs are working and only adds to the dull feeling. The very few psyche moments are probably the best ones you can expect here. "Jogo de Calçada" is one of them.

If you are interested in good old psychedelia, I would recommend you to grab one of the good Airplane albums instead of looking for the holy grail with "Os Mutantes". If needed, you can get the confirmation with "Haleluia". The worst here. Press nextT.

Two stars for this average album.

Brazilian psychedelia!

After the terrific kickoff towards psychedelic rock that was their second album, Os Mutantes are back a years later with a new album, now completely drenched with psychedelia and comedy. However, unlike in their previous output, Os Mutantes just make an average album this time and the possible cause for that is the excess of comedy, that actually make the album bad. In other words, Os Mutantes are trying too hard to be funny and entertaining in other ways, and those ways do not involve making good music. Even my father does not like this album entirely and A Divina Comédia Ou Ando Meio Desligado is one of his favorite Os Mutantes albums.

However, and thankfully, they are way too talented to put out a bad album, thus releasing quite a mixed bag of good and bad songs, what can be seen since the beginning of the album: the opening is just a good (comedy) song, followed by a bad song, what is not very good. Thankfully, the next three songs are very good, specially O Meu Refrigerador Não Funciona, that is actually a very good comedy rock song à lá Janis Joplin. Then comes the horrible Hey Boy, that looks like some 50's rock (not the good 50's rock, but his retarded cousin), which is followed by the not-quite-good Preciso Urgentemente Encontrar um Amigo. Chão de Estrelas is a bit better than both songs that preceded it, but the funny part is actually far from good. Jogo de Calçada is not a very good song, mainly because it is overlong and, if it was 1 or maybe 2 minutes shorter it would be a lot better. The closing tracks are actually very good and are probably one of the best songs of the whole album. Haleluia is very good and have some nice organ and vocal work and Oh! Mulher Infiel have a great guitar and drum duo with some nice organ as well.

The highlights go to: Ando Meio Desligado; Ave, Lúcifer; Desculpe, Baby; Meu Refrigerador não Funciona; Haleluia; Oh Mulher Infiel.

the saddest moments are: Quem Tem Medo De Brincar De Amor; Hey Boy; Jogo de Calçada.

Grade and Final Thoughts

Mixing some good and some bad songs, this album can only be rated with 3 stars, as it is not good enough for 4 stars for having too many band songs. So, 3 stars for me.

This would be a 4 stars or maybe 5 stars album if it only includes "Ando Meio Desligado", "Ave Lucifer" and "Meu Refrigerador Não Funciona". The main track is wonderful and opens the album with sort of caunterbury keys feeling. But hold your expectations. The same as the previous one, A Divina Comédia Ou Ando Meio Desligado lost the precious side into the fog of poor compositions. Again, Os Mutantes album is under attack: and it's the strike of the boring tracks. It have very childish tracks. But "Ando Meio Desligado" is a very pleasent track, and it's worth. You might check the album for the good tracks.

This is the masterpiece of Mutantes (and, in my opinion, of Brazilian Rock). This is a brilliant album already on its cover, which portrays Dante and Virgílio no Inferno; in turn, the back cover generated controversy, with Rita Lee (vocals and percussion) lying half naked in a bed between the brothers Arnaldo Baptista (keyboards and vocals) and Sérgio Dias (guitar and vocals). This disc represents the rupture of the band with Tropicália, with which it was associated in the two previous albums; the entry of two members weighed in on this, which increased the rock footprint: bassist Arnolpho Lima Filho, a.k.a. Liminha (who in the following decade would become one of the most sought after producers of national pop/rock, especially for his records with the Titans), and drummer Ronaldo Paes Leme, a.k.a. Dinho. The most famous song - and a strong candidate for the best composition of the Mutantes - is "Ando Meio Desligado". The instrumental part, especially the bass and the guitar, indicates a shift towards psychedelic rock (which was already present in previous records, but mixed with other aesthetics, such as "baroque pop"), and the lyrics reinforce this trend, since it sounds like a declaration of love under lysergic effects. In 2001, this track got a great cover by Pato Fu. "Quem Tem Medo de Brincar de Amor" has a vocal with a mocking Californian accent. Highlight for the pulsating bass line and the festive atmosphere, which was inserted to drown out the section that gives the title the title, due to its possible sexual connotation - which had already led censorship to veto the initial title, "Quem Tem Medo de Fazer Amor" ("Who's Afraid to Make Love"). "Ave, Lúcifer" manages to be beautiful and sinister at the same time, with one of the best lyrics of the band ("Apples surround naked bodies / In this flowing river / In gentle veins inside me / Angels and Archangels rest in this hellish Eden" ) combined with impeccable orchestral arrangements (made by maestro Rogério Duprat) - not by chance, it may be one of their songs that has aged the best. The ballad "Desculpe, Babe", according to Chris Fuscaldo in Discobiografia Mutante (2018), is a complementary song to "Quem Tem Medo de Brincar de Amor": "one more dramatic about breakup, the other more cheerful about restart" ( p. 74). "Meu Refrigerador Não Funciona" is another debauchery to Californians, this time both to Janis Joplin's vocals and to the long introductions of the bands' psychedelic songs there. It is one of the funniest compositions of the band, and the use of keyboards by Arnaldo to create a "macabre" atmosphere is masterful. "Hey Boy" targets the playboys who frequented the legendary Rua Augusta (which will be the subject of another song performed by Mutantes, two years later), in São Paulo. The protagonist's ending couldn't be more tragicomic: the song ends with the noise of a car accident ... "Preciso Urgentemente Encontrar um Amigo" is another case of satirical cover, this time of an unprecedented composition of two icons of the Jovem Guarda: Roberto and Erasmo Carlos. According to Chris Fuscaldo, "Roberto wanted to appear concerned about the issues of his time, tuned in to the youth that took to the streets (...), but he did not like the result and passed the music on to Erasmo, who handed it over to Mutantes before even if he recorded it (...) on his disc in 1972 "(p. 75). The only remnant of tropicalist aesthetics in A Divina Comédia is the iconoclastic cover of "Chão de Estrelas", an originally dramatic song by Sílvio Caldas. There is even a helicopter noise after the passage about the "woman, dove, who flew"! Tom Cardoso, in his text about this album for the Grande Discoteca Brasileira collection (2010), comments that the television presenter Flávio Cavalcanti, "who used to break live albums that he did not like, would have reduced the Mutantes album by pieces. cause of the deconstruction of 'Chão de Estrelas' "(p. 37). Cavalcanti, according to Fuscaldo, still made a speech "about the decay of youth values" (p. 78), which must have amused the band. "Jogo de Calçada" is a lesser known song, but I don't hesitate to put it as one of the highlights of A Divina Comédia. The performance of Sérgio Dias on the guitar is exciting, and the lyrics of the Wandler Cunha and Ilton Oliveira (from whom Arnaldo asked for permission to put it on his band's 3rd album) is very well sung by Rita Lee. The last two tracks are the most experimental, which may have to do with the fact that one of them has minimal lyrics ("Haleluia") on which melodic variations are made - at first it looks like a religious song, but after a while the mood of play is clear - and the other ("Oh! Mulher Infiel") is an instrumental jam with guitar and demonic keyboards.

Released on March 2, 1970, The Divine Comedy or Ando Meio Offline indicates the sound paths that the band would explore and deepen in the following albums, such as Jardim Elétrico (1971) and Mutantes e seus Cometas no País do Baurets (1972) - by the way, the latter would point to a new stylistic transition towards progressive rock. In such a consistent discography, pointing A Divina Comédia as the best Mutantes album goes through both its very high level repertoire and the experimental and irreverent spirit that permeates each of the tracks. I must agree with Tom Cardoso's assessment: "they reached their creative, musical peak, without whom they would become serious and 'mature' musicians. No, they were still deliciously debauched, as crazy as ever" (p. 37).