Review: Caetano Veloso gigs the Hollywood Bowl; Bird and Banhart offer support

Three handsome men, each raised in different decades in different countries and with varied demeanors, walked onto the Hollywood Bowl stage one after another on Sunday night and sang in a few different Romance languages about mortality, love, diamonds and jasmine, sinister helicopters, disgusting sex, movie stars and more.

The Venezuelan American Devendra Banhart was casual, almost to a fault, but through his occasionally magnificent songs confirmed an ambition that belied his laid-back whatever happens, happens persona. The Chicagoan Andrew Bird built cascading melodies and harmonies on his violin, and was joined by his band the Hands of Glory to update vintage country and suggest joyous new avenues for American vernacular music.

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FOR THE RECORD
An earlier version of this post gave the title of “Brazil Classics 1: Beleza Tropical” as “Brazil Classics: Beliza Tropical.”
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Most important in the scheme of things, the fabled Brazilian singer, songwriter and restless creative spirit Caetano Veloso, in his first appearance at the Bowl after more than four decades as one of his country’s most vital voices, powered through a set as daring as it was inspired.

His exuberant, expansive sounds married bossa nova, rock, reggae, funk and a host of genre-less noises generated by his and his three-piece band’s imagination. That his fellow musicians looked to be half his age -- at the most -- says something about Veloso’s approach and his muse.

If nothing else, let history record that on Sept. 21, 2014, during a late-season installment of KCRW’s annual World Festival series, Veloso, 72, finally sang his classic song “Baby” in the open air glory of the Hollywood Bowl.

It was a long time coming. First made popular in 1968 by vocalist Gal Costa, kindred creator in the Brazilian “tropicalia” movement of the late 1960s, the song has become a borderless touchstone. The version he offered on Sunday was gentle and typically surreal, featuring a wobbly wah-wah pedal and Veloso’s luxurious, coffee-stained voice.

There was so much more, though, and they arrived in quick, deep moments. Guitarist Pedro Sa’s solo, embedded within “Um Abraçaço,” a humming, tense rhythm song, was one of the most inspired guitar bursts, Brazilian, American, earthly or otherwise that has ever echoed from the Cahuenga Pass. Amid the first moments of his opening song, the galloping frenzy of “A Bossa Nova É Foda,” from his most recent “Abraçaço,” Veloso carried his voice up until he hit on a quick yodel, a man delivering an invective about his music’s continued virility.

That many of the songs Veloso offered were from recent work was an affirmation to any artist looking for heroes who push at the edges well into their creative life. “Odeio,” from his excellent 2006 album “Cê,” tore through six minutes of hypnotic guitar rock as psyched-out as anything Thee Oh Sees or Ty Segall is doing on the indie circuit. Veloso, though, tempered it with an acoustic guitar as the distortion gave way to what felt like an inhalation of ocean air.

When he revisited old work, he did so without sentimentality. (That was left to the adoring crowd.) “O Leãozinho,” which helped ferry in a belated Brazilian Invasion when the 1977 song appeared on the 1989 David Byrne-curated compilation “Brazil Classics 1: Beleza Tropical,” was offered simply, as it should be, on acoustic guitar. Many sang along.

He turned “Eclipso Oculto,” a weird synth-pop-reggae song, into a hard-bopping rocker a la the Beatles at the Star Club. “Nine Out of Ten,” from his 1972 mostly-English language album “Transa,” was a glorious, comic affirmation of mortality.

Earlier in the evening, Bird and band offered a different brand of swinging affirmation, one that featured as its central instruments an amplified violin and a loop pedal. An artist who first came to attention with the old-time revival band the Squirrel Nut Zippers, Bird over the past few decades has explored and connected vast swaths of acoustic music, and offered within it smart lyrical critiques and couplets.

“We’ll fight for your music halls and dying cities,” he sang in “Plasticities,” describing an opposition chasing “neural walls and plasticities -- and precious territory.”

On “When That Helicopter Comes,” one of a number of songs by the Handsome Family that Bird performed, he and his band (which featured on backing vocal and guitar the singer Tift Merritt), updated an old gospel country conceit about the End of Days to include black helicopters. Bird’s work floats, but it can be a challenge to virgin ears. So many accents and inspirations fly through his pieces that it takes work to digest.

To say that Banhart, a troubadour whose work coupling American experimental folk music with South American sounds has resulted in a number of key works, was relaxed at the Bowl is an understatement. Opening the roster with an affected casualness, the artist and three-piece band performed seated, and bantered between songs as though they were hanging on a friend’s porch.

After doing a version of “Won’t You Come Over,” a witty song about a seemingly ill-advised tryst, Banhart, 33, joked that he was living at the Bowl: “I found it on Craigslist,” he said. Using an unprintable cuss word, he also attempted to deliver the “[worst] chord ever played at the Bowl.” He and band tried – twice. Neither sounded worse than the opening chord of Mötley Crüe doing “Don’t Go Away Mad (Just Go Away)” earlier in the summer.

“Never Seen Such Sad Things,” from Banhart’s 2013 album “Mala,” was his set’s highlight. A beguiling, rhythmically wild love song, it contains a few choice stanzas that made the Bowl erupt. “If we ever make love again,” he sang while his band harmonized like the Byrds, “I’m sure that it will be disgusting – race to the end, race to the end.”

It’s a funny line in a wry song, and helped set a tone that spread across the night. Combined, the three proved that carved good looks can get a fella onto the stage, but charisma and creative force justify the booking.

Follow Randall Roberts on Twitter: @liledit