That Elza Soares would be making new music at all in 2016—let alone new music this good—is in and of itself something of a miracle. The 79-year-old Brazilian singer has seemingly lived four entire lifetimes, surviving an abusive marriage at an alarmingly early age to become one of her country’s premiere vocalists in the 1960s. Her life was marked by more sadness and trauma than can be sufficiently outlined in this limited space: she endured the deaths of multiple children, lost her mother in a car accident caused by her drunk husband, who she also eventually lost to cirrhosis. So if there’s a darkness to The Woman at the End of the World, the explanation is clear. Yet what strikes hardest about the record is how adventurous it is. There’s no slinking into the twilight for Soares: the record’s 11 songs invert and reconfigure the classic sound of Brazilian music, infusing it with a wide array of other elements. “Pra Fuder” trips forward on the kind of digital bassline that typically powers dark ambient, covering it with frantically-darting horns; “Benetida,” with its spidery guitars and Soares’ lunging vocals, has post-rock burned into its DNA. “Dança” is grimy and groaning, sewn up with razor-wire guitars. And Soares is in spectacular voice throughout, her chalky alto alternately grinding and spiraling across the octaves. It’s the same kind of maneuver Scott Walker pulled with Tilt: a beloved crooner daring their audience to follow them down a dark, twisting path.
J. Edward Keyes