***1/2 Caetano Veloso

ORFEU

(Nonesuch)

The work of Brazilian singer Caetano Veloso and a handful of others for Brazilian director Carlos Diegues's retelling of the Orpheus & Eurydice myth brings together haunting new versions of songs from the 1959 film Black Orpheus (based on the same Brazilian play as Diegues's contemporary movie) and flares of hard-edged Rio hip-hop and electronica, as well as some of Veloso's most beautiful recent writing. In particular his love song "Sou Vocè," sung in a Veloso-like whisper by the film's star, Toni Garrido, sustains all the romantic humanism that made Ceatano a leader in the invention of tropicalismo in the late '60s. The instrumentals occasionally dive into string-driven schmaltz, but there are plenty of antidotes in spirited interludes of acoustic guitar and creepy turns like the melodramatic percussion piece "A Policía Sobe o Morro" (which would work on The X-Files) and Veloso's primal trip-hop sound collage "Batuque Final."

-- Ted Drozdowski