The sexy, au courant term "beyond genre," implies a bold original mix of styles and influences that signal fearless vision and esthetic genius. The problem is that fashioning your own genre is a heavy lift, especially when you're an instrumental virtuoso—thoroughbreds for whom choosing a mainstream style can be confounding. Primarily known as a guitarist's guitarist, Daniel Santiago, who gained wide praise from jazz fans for Simbiose, his 2018 duo set with Pedro Martins and wider exposure after an invitation to Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival the following year, has now made a genre-combining move for a wider world audience.
More than being ahead of its time, the idea here is to bring a breezy, Brazilian Tropicália influence to the pop leanings of a man who's referenced "Rush, Supertramp, Bee Gees, Pink Floyd, and Milton Nascimento," when asked how he connected to Song for Tomorrow producer and fellow guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel. Slickly-produced these 13 tracks are solidly in the soft rock vein, toggling at times between power ballad roar, slinky midtempo '80s pop/rock, and in the title track—where Santiago shows he can shred with the best of them—a welcome, proggy feel. The stylistic breadth runs from lead track "Open World" with Clapton that has whiffs of Toto's "Africa" to an expert trio of delicate, nylon-stringed acoustic guitar duos with Martins, including the bonus track closer "Salamander" where their familiarity creates endless invention and simpatico ideas. Joshua Redman joins on soprano saxophone for the polyrhythmic, "O Que Valera."
The one new constant and perhaps the fall line for judgements on the album is Santiago's voice. Strong and smooth in both English and Portuguese, it's made celestial by being multiplied many times over and then amplified by vaporous, expansive vocal reverb. Added to the glossy production style, his vocals on numbers like "Não Vai Apagar (Fly Lua Fly)" and "Clara Manhã" tread perilously close to being smooth jazz. Impeccably played yet still a safe, indistinct portrait, Song for Tomorrow is the softer side of Santiago searching for a fresh context for his virtuosity. © Robert Baird/Qobuz