Mr. Trend's Random 10

Lots of people rip on bossa nova as music to play at dinner parties for middle-class forty-somethings, and of course, Jobim is directly tied to this. But the album "Urubu," where Boto comes from, is radically different from "The Girl from Ipanema," as Boto (the album-opener) immediately indicates. Instead of the traditional bossa nova sound, we get a birimbau, a one-stringed instrument used in capoeira, followed by whistles common to samba parades and unsettled instrumentation from there (and throughout the rest of the album). Tired of the bossa nova sound himself in the early 70s, Jobim decided to record more "out-there" material, incorporating other Brazilian instruments that weren't so closely tied to bossa nova into his music. Many fans turned on Jobim for Urubu and Matita Pere (another album he released around this time) because of his refusal to just crank out another set of "Ipanema"-style songs. However, while I enjoy bossa nova, I think Urubu is probably Jobim's best album, and well worth checking out, particularly if you aren't a fan of bossa nova. It just shows how deep Jobim's often-underrated compositional talent ran.

1. "Boto" - Antonio Carlos Jobim
2. "Here She Comes Now" - Galaxie 500
3. "The Magnolia Triangle" - Yusef Lateef
4. "Caminhante Noturno" - Os Mutantes
5. "Plastic" - Portishead
6. "Memorize Your Lines" - Sleater-Kinney
7. "My Heartbeat's Dying" - The Raveonettes
8. "Dry Well Blues" - Charley Patton
9. "Folha Morta" - Maria Bethania
10. "La Despedida" - Manu Chao