Review by Jason Birchmeier in allmusic
CéU proved to one of the more internationally appealing singers to break out of Brazil around the time of her 2005 debut, ultimately winning a Latin Grammy nomination for Best New Artist and garnering interest for herself in Europe and North America. Her singing is what earned her acclaim, yet her music is novel as well, a fusion of samba, reggae, and electronica, with touches of jazz and soul. She was born Maria do Céu Whitaker Poças in São Paulo; however, she bills herself as simply CéU. (In Portuguese, céu can mean either sky or heaven, depending on the context; more specifically, the word comes from the Latin word cælu and refers to the infinite space overhead, including the sky as well as the cosmos.) She grew up in a music family; her father is a composer, arranger, and musicologist. At an early age, she learned to appreciate renowned Brazilian composers such as Heitor Villa-Lobos, Ernesto Nazareth, and Orlando Silva, and as a teenager, she decided to become a singer. Rather than go to college, she studied music, including theory as well as the violão, a nylon-stringed guitar native to Brazil. CéU eventually moved to New York City for a while once she was old enough to leave home. There she encountered many new influences, including old-school jazz singers such as Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald as well as contemporary R&B singers such as Lauryn Hill and Erykah Badu. Also while in New York City, she befriended Antonio Pinto, a fellow Brazilian musician; he is perhaps best known for composing the score to City of God (2002), among other films. In time, after moving back to Brazil and fronting a couple groups, CéU recorded her debut album, a self-titled release produced largely by Beto Villares, with the aid of Pinto. CéU was released in 2005 by Urban Jungle, a label based in São Paulo, in partnership with Ambulante Discos, Villares’ label. The album was later licensed by Six Degrees, a stylish label based in San Francisco that is known for its catalog of Brazilian releases, after CéU had already been met with success in parts of Europe, including France — and, by association, French-speaking Canada as well. Thanks to the buzz surrounding her debut, CéU earned a Latin Grammy nomination in 2006 for Best New Artist.
CéU’s debut album — originally released by Urban Jungle Records in Brazil in 2005 and reissued two years later in the U.S. by Six Degrees in conjunction with Starbucks — is a lush blend of African-rooted North and South American music styles (MPB, samba, soul, jazz, Afrobeat, reggae) with cutting-edge contemporary production techniques. The radiant São Paulo vocalist is no doubt the star of this show, as she writes her own songs as well as sings them. The formative span of time she spent in New York City, where she found a rich array of influences, from classic jazz (Billie Holiday) and contemporary soul (Lauryn Hill) to hip-hop and electronica, greatly inform her music here. From song to song, CéU sings in a number of respective fashions, often channeling her influences. Her reverent cover of "Concrete Jungle" is the most overt instance of this, as she channels the spirit of Bob Marley for three-and-a-half minutes and does so quite convincingly. So while CéU may be the star of the show here, with her clear talent and varied wardrobe of influences, producer Beto Villares is the X-factor. He produces all but one of the 15 songs ("Ave Cruz" is the fine work of Antoñio Pinto), and he brings the songs to life in such a way that their blend of traditional music styles is melded tastefully, if not downright perfectly, with present-day advances in technology. He ensures that every song here has a prominent rhythm, even if it’s a gentle soul groove or a jazzy lilt, even if that means he has to play the bassline himself (and in some cases he does, according to the revealing track-by-track credits). Practically every song features real percussion and bass playing (i.e., no programming, except on "Roda" and "Ave Cruz" — each outstanding), as well as frequent acoustic guitar, all of which gives the album an organic earthiness that most so-called worldbeat albums lack, not to mention the productions of globally appropriating downtempo electronica acts like Thievery Corporation. Yet at the same time, Villares makes frequent use of studio effects, multi-tracking especially, and moves the percussion and bass to the forefront of the mix, and he also incorporates the turntablism of DJ Marco on most tracks. So even if the music of CéU is earthy and, for the most part, actually hand-played rather than programmed, it’s just as contemporary in technique and style as that of Thievery Corporation, to again reference one of the most impressive concurrent downtempo electronica acts. CéU consequently fits in well with fellow cutting-edge female Brazilian artists such as Cibelle, Bebel Gilberto, and Marisa Monte who straddle classic as well as contemporary styles of music, and while each of these women is thankfully unique in her own wonderful way, they as a group represent what seems to be a growing, forward-looking Brazilian music movement whose appeal is increasingly global in its reach.