Charlotte Dos Santos dazzled with Cleo, her 2017 debut, starting with reshaped English folk, concluding with an Afro-Cuban dismissal, and somewhere between composing lyrics and melodies worthy of neo-soul paragon
Jill Scott (to the tune of
Freddie Hubbard's "Red Clay").
Dos Santos had just released a follow-up EP when the COVID-19 pandemic thwarted her touring plans. So she wrote and recorded
Morfo, titled after a genus of Amazonian butterflies she uses as a metaphor for the changes she and her music underwent in the process. Made with Josh Crocker and Tom Henry,
Gotts Street Park members who have worked together and separately with
Kali Uchis,
Celeste, and
Mabel,
Morfo is richer and more organic than Cleo. It often sounds like the effort of an intuitive band designed to tease out and spotlight
Dos Santos' melodies, which unfurl like ribbons with natural grace, twisting when the singer finds herself dealing with conflicting emotions.
Dos Santos most overtly maintains her familial and musical connections to Brazil with "Filha do Sol" ("Daughter of the Sun"), a bilingual and subtly regal tribute to her Brazilian father and Norwegian mother with an interpolation of
Edu Lobo's "O Açoite Bateu" that segues into a blast of batucada. The rest largely alternates between percolating funk, sunlit folk-soul, and sinewy R&B with meaty synthetic and electric basslines.
Dos Santos somehow sounds composed and serene whether she's batting her eyelashes, pledging devotion, pleading for tolerance, or castigating a clingy ex. The same goes for the album's most energetic song, "Ghost in the Shell," something like a missing dance scene of uninhibited joy from
Janelle Monáe's
ArchAndroid. That's not to say
Dos Santos ever sounds distanced. She makes each feeling felt with slight nuances, always in total control of her voice. ~ Andy Kellman