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Another brilliant soul lost to suicide. I found this 16 year old Brazilian artist on Emusic today and I was transformed to my youth. Memories of Leonard Cohen, Bright Eyes, Belle and Sebastion come quickly when you listen to these heart felt songs written out of love and depression. -Marshe
"I know what it's like to be left out when all your friends try the new hip suicide thing," sang young Brazilian songwriter Yonlu — AKA Vinicius Gageiro Marques — in what became the first track of a remarkable posthumous debut assembled from music the 16-year-old left behind after himself committing suicide in 2006. ("Yonlu" was the screen name Marques used on the songwriters’ bulletin board where he posted several of these tracks). Some of the songs on this surprisingly uplifting collection — notably "I Know What It's Like," "Luana (Mêcanica Celeste Aplicada)," and "Waterfall" — stand up with the best Brazilian popular music on record. Others are obviously the work of a young experimentalist who had yet to find his voice and, in a very real sense, died trying.
Several tunes on A Society in Which No Tear Is Shed... address suicide directly, though usually with a deceptive, self-mocking wink. "I'll tell you why I wanna die," Yonlu sings of his latest romantic failure in "Humiliations"; he cries wolf again in the strangely literal "Suicide," which concludes, "Now my suicide is lit by the sunset/ It's pretty sad if you ask me." Indeed. As artistically precocious as he was emotionally fragile, Yonlu sounds more mature and confident in Portuguese — check out his suave cover of Vitor Ramil's "Estrela, Estrela" and "Luana (Mêcanica Celeste Aplicada)," a lush tropicalia-infused nod to sweet American teenage pop circa 1956 or so — than singing in his self-taught English. At his best, Yonlu combines the cerebral sophistication of tropicalia star Caetano Veloso with the tragic fragility of Nick Drake. Yet judging by the rough edits and musique concréte of tracks like "The Boy and the Tiger" and "Q-Tip," Yonlu had plenty of room to grow as a sonic scientist. His wordless crooning in "Waterfall" is guaranteed to blend brilliantly with Panda Bear on your next heartbreak-inspired mixtape.
