Thievery Corporation - Saudade

Rob Garza and Eric Hilton built Thievery Corporation on a foundation of dub, jazz, reggae, and bossa nova, all of it filtered through the basement studio they ran out of the liquor room at Hilton's Eighteenth Street Lounge in Washington, DC. Across six albums and nearly two decades, those Brazilian influences surfaced in pieces, woven through downtempo grooves and lounge productions. Saudade, their seventh studio album, was the first time they devoted an entire record to that side of their sound, and ten years on it still stands as one of the most fully realized statements in their catalog.

The album draws directly from the golden age of Brazilian songwriting, channeling Antonio Carlos Jobim, Gal Costa, and Luis Bonfa, but Thievery never plays it as pure pastiche. Each of the thirteen tracks is sung by one of five vocalists, longtime collaborator LouLou Ghelichkhani, Nouvelle Vague's Karina Zeviani, Argentine singer Natalia Clavier, newcomer Elin Melgarejo, and Shana Halligan, and the rotation gives the record a shifting, conversational feel rather than a single fixed voice. Highlights include the airy "Decollage," the percussive "Meu Nego," and the title track itself, a slow-burning instrumental that gives the whole album its name and its mood.

Released in 2014 on the duo's own Eighteenth Street Lounge Music label, Saudade reaffirmed Thievery Corporation's standing as one of electronic music's most consistently inventive acts, unwilling to repeat themselves even after years of success. This 10th anniversary pressing arrives on limited transparent light blue vinyl, a fitting, breezy match for an album built entirely around longing, warmth, and the bossa nova tradition that helped shape the band from the start.