music
Six years after the release of Marrow, the third album that took them on an extensive tour through auditoriums, clubs, and festivals, You Can’t Win, Charlie Brown (YCWCB) returned this year with a new project. Âmbar is a new chapter in the band’s journey, in which the songs are written and sung entirely in Portuguese. Written in the last five and a half years, the new work presents tracks with titles with a double meaning: women’s names which can also have other readings. “Celeste” and “Magnólia”, the first two singles, are good examples of this. On Amber, there are also more significant changes in the sonic identity of the band, compared to the previous works, Chromatic (2011), Diffraction / Refraction (2014), and Marrow (2016): an eclecticism of pop freshness, less electronic and less rock.
The band is comprised of Afonso Cabral (voice, guitars, keyboards, and bass), David Santos (voice, keyboards, and percussions), João Gil (voice, keyboards, guitars, and bass), Pedro Branco (voice, guitars, and bass), Salvador Menezes (voice, bass, and acoustic guitar) and Tomás Sousa (voice, drums, and samplers). They emerged in 2009, as a quartet formed by Cabral, Menezes, Santos, and Luís Costa when the track “Sad Song” was included in the collection “Novos Talentos FNAC”. In 2010, YCWCB released a homonymous EP by Optimus Discos, which was very well received by critics. Shortly after, through Pataca Discos, they released their debut album. In 2019, they celebrated their tenth career anniversary with a series of concerts that toured the country. In between, they also played at festivals such as Primavera Sound (Porto), South By Southwest (Austin), and The Great Escape (Brighton). Outside YCWCB, Afonso Cabral recently released his first solo album, Morada, and is part of Bruno Pernadas’ line-up, Salvador Menezes made his solo debut in 2018 with Novas Ocupações, David Santos is also known as noiserv, Tomás Sousa is part of Minta & The Brook Trout, and João Gil was part of Diabo na Cruz.
age rating m/6
