Nha Sentimento

If this was the first ever Cesaria Evora album I’d give it four or five stars. Even after a stroke sustained during her Australian tour of 2008, her nonchalant, husky melancholy is magnificent, though perhaps a little less powerful than on previous releases. And whilst they are a little hampered by excrescent and syrupy strings, plaintive mornas such as ‘Mam’Bia É So Mi’ and ‘Sentimento’ are still dripping with saudade – that uniquely Lusitanian mix of longing, regret and fond memory that is both joyful and sad in the same moment. There’s the usual sprinkling of the more uptempo coladeiras (like ‘Tchom Frio’ or ‘Esperanga di Mar Azul’) in slightly greater than normal numbers. And Evora still sings them with a kind of charming, sweet reluctance and wonderful hesitant timing – even though at times she begins to verge on the cheerful.

But Nha Sentimento is of course by no means her first album. And delightful though it may be, it’s nonetheless much the same as all her releases since La Diva Aux Pieds Nus and Miss Perfumado – a fact which will no doubt please many of her innumerable fans.