Back when I was in high school and college, I spent pretty much every cent of my limited spending money on music from East Village institutions like Other Music and Kim's Video. I went through a long phase where I was into obscure psychedelic music from the late '60s and early '70s, and I'm pretty sure that it was at Other Music that I had the very touching experience of discovering a compilation of lost and out-of-print psychedelia from Latin America, from Thomas Hartlage's Love, Peace & Poetry series. I hadn't even known that there was a psych scene on that continent—let one alone responsible for so many hooky, time-warped tunes—and since that day, I've always associated that store with experience of stumbling upon something beautiful where nobody else was looking. So there's something serendipitous in hearing hear that Other Music's house label is putting out this record from Brazil's Boogarins, the present-day duo of two Goiânia-based teens—Fernando Almeida and Benke Ferraz—who seem to be just as impacted by that musical form's below-the-equator diaspora as I was. As Plantas Que Curam, which you can stream in full below, is entirely in Portuguese, but the album's title translates to "plants that heal," and the band is named after a kind of jasmine flower that, according to Brazilian folklore, is supposed to "smell like pure love"; fortunately, you don't need to speak the native tongue to be transported by all the burnished guitar textures and deftly chiseled melodies. As Plantas Que Curam is out October 1st via Other Music.
Stream: Boogarins, As Plantas Que Curam