Gilberto Gil

Legendary Brazilian singer Gilberto Gil has always stood out when it comes to musical production. After the Tropicalia phenomenon he helped create in the 1960s went global, Gil left it alone. As new-wave samba and bossa nova gained foreign acclaim in the early 1970s, Gil steered away from those genres as well, always distancing himself from his contemporaries when audiences were just getting used to his sound. And here we meet Gil again, 35 years older, a little grayer, and wise enough to know that his knack for doing the unexpected is what's made him such an icon in the first place. His newest disc, Gil Luminoso, is the result of Gil's lovely decision to revisit some of his classic tunes, strip out all sounds except vocals and guitar, and offer the bare essentials of those compositions. Thus, Luminoso is the first collection of his work that is completely acoustic and exclusively Gil. Songs such as "Copo Vazio" and "O Seu Amor" have such beautiful instrumentation behind them that you can almost feel your serotonin levels rise with each chord. There are no throwaway tracks here; aside from the fact that these songs are already hits, Gil and producer Bené Fonteles picked tunes from Gil's career that deserved to be revisited in acoustic format. All of this makes Luminoso one of his most romantic albums to date.