DEODATO — Deodato 2 (review)

DEODATO — Deodato 2 album cover Album · 1973 · Pop/Art Song/Folk Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
Sean Trane
After the timeless classic album of Prelude, the next album came as simply called 2, but it’s rather deceiving, since Eumur Deodato had a 60’s career as a samba and bossa artiste. But what we as a site are looking at are these wild JR/F albums that the Brazilian released in the most essential year of musical freedom, the early 70’s. And just like Prelude, 2 repeats the formula of mixing some awesomely arranged covers like Moody’s Nights In White Satin, Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue and Steely Dan’s Do It Again and a bunch of often torrid self-penned jazz-rock-fusion compositions. Some of the JR/F giants are present like Cobham, Clarke, but there are two dozens no-less deserving lesser-known musos as well, including large brass and string sections. As is usually the case with all of those killer JR/F essential albums from that classic era, this was again on the Columbia label

Starting on the 9-mins+ 100MPH Super strut funk-fusion piece, complete with a fuzzed-out guitar solo, courtesy of the relative unknown John Tropea, but shinning all the way through the album; the rest of the A-side glides smoothly on the best known Gershwin piece giving it the full works mixing strings and jazz-rock instrumentation and later on a brassy bluesy rendition of the classic Moodies hit. If the former takes an attentive ear to recognize the original piece, the latter is instantly recognizable. The A-side closes on a rearranged version of Ravel’s Pavane For A Dead Princess, which is a little too cheesy and slow for my tastes.

Opening the flipside is a superb 150MPH Skyscrapers fusion piece, where you can find Eumur’s Hammer-Corea influences on synths, followed by a sitar-sounding guitar leading Latin Flute track and a much slower (and cheesy) Venus piece. Closing off the debate is a rather cool and swingy instrumental version of Steely Dan’s first mega-hit Do It Again, just as good as the original. Definitely a worthy follower to Deodato’s previous album, but with slightly less merits since the formula of the former is mostly repeated without much variation.

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