Rodrigo Amarante … where to begin? For starters, you won’t meet anyone else like him. A Brazilian multi-instrumentalist/composer currently based in Los Angeles, Rodrigo is one of those artists that comes around every so often and leaves you feeling something you've never felt before. He is the most recent addition to the Polyvinyl family and we are humbled and honored to be announcing our partnership. 

Rodrigo Amarante has probably come into your orbit without you realizing it — you may have heard "Tuyo," his theme tune to the Netflix drama Narcos, or the Little Joy album, recorded with Fab Moretti and Binki Shapiro, you might have noted his name among the credits on songs by Gal Costa, Norah Jones and Gilberto Gil; or perhaps you saw him play live with Brazilian samba big band Orquestra Imperial, or with Rio rockers Los Hermanos; you really should have heard his debut album, Cavalo, released in 2014. 

Amarante's long-awaited follow-up, Drama, introduces a whole new level to his artistry. Arriving July 16 – it's purposefully caricatural, cinematic; "As biased as memory". It flows as an arch, playfully deceiving, like a tale. Pre-order an exclusive first pressing Early Bird edition of Drama on Half Clear Olive/Half White (limited to 1500). Also available is the newly reissued Cavalo Early Bird edition (limited to 750) on Cloudy Clear Splatter.

Today's news is accompanied by the album's lead single "Maré" – an upbeat, seemingly happy song with less jolly aspects hidden beneath the surface, based on the Spanish proverb: the tide will fetch what the ebb brings. 

“Things that arrive in your hand by destiny, they are just as easily swept away,” explains Amarante.

Of the self-directed video, Amarante further details: “This song is about how we shape our destiny and character by what we crave, wish, dream about, despite the outcome. The video is not. That is deliberate. The video is about writing the song, or any song, not about the song itself. It is a representation of writing it, a look on the work that is to produce the magic that is writing, this way looping back to what shapes my own destiny, my wishes and cravings, what the song talks about. I say magic because there is an unpredictable element in writing, yet it is a mental activity: there lies drama.”

Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1976, Rodrigo Amarante points to two incidents in his past that fed directly into the recordings that make up Drama: a childhood illness that makes him appreciate the beauty of the second chance; and the moment when his father (with Amarante’s begrudging consent) cut off his long hair, an attempt to unburden all the drama and sensitivity from the young man’s head. “Dressing up as means to reveal, rather than dressing down, to conceal, that is Drama” says Amarante. “A tool. Tickling memory into confession, seeing through the eye holes of a mask. Peeking into the mirror that is playing a part. This is not something I followed but a posthumous realization, something that followed me, as it often happens. These songs were the instruments to realize it, not the other way around.”

Drama began life at the end of 2018 with a session involving Rodrigo’s regular band - “Lucky” Paul Taylor on drums, bassist Todd Dahlhoff, Andres Renteria on congas, and Amarante on guitar. With writing and recording continuing through 2019, some songs were pulled out from the back of drawers, and more ideas came anew. In early 2020, with the album not quite ready, lockdown hit Los Angeles and Amarante found himself alone, adding overdubs and mixing the completed tracks with Noah Georgeson, though the two were never in the same room. Unsurprisingly, isolation dictated the sound of the album. “Lockdown and limitation have produced some great ideas. I started the album wanting to focus on rhythm and melody, to abandon those rich chord progressions and modulations I’ve inherited from Brazil and be more straight for a bit. As I wrote I realized that there was a trigger to me in that attempt, a shadow of the shaved-head boy I had to be, sucking it up. Instead, I embraced the complications I’ve inherited.”  

Drama closes with piano and Amarante’s voice on the closing track: “To live is to fall.” After all the emotional upheavals the singer has put his cast through, is this some kind of farewell to this mortal coil? “Everything furthers,” says Amarante. “Whispering. You get louder like that, people respond better to an invitation,” and adds: “Staring at the absurd while remaining kind, being open to the gifts of confusion; that's why we create these tools that are stories and songs, to help us see each other.”