Arto Lindsay: Prize

Not Ani. Arto. Deal.

No one makes it as hip to be unskilled as Arto Lindsay does. For years, Lindsay has lured fans into his musical fantasy world with the falsely modest claim that he can't sing or play the guitar. And while these claims are not entirely untrue, his unique sound—think Tribe Called Quest at its smoothest, infused with the sounds of bossa nova standards—is explanation enough for his popularity in his native Brazil and in the United States.

Lindsay's latest album, Prize, has the distinction of being the first album produced on Ani DiFranco's Righteous Babe Records label that doesn't include DiFranco herself. Its 12 tracks—five in Portuguese—include appearances from guests as disparate as Brian Eno and Vinicius Cantuaria. The diversity shows: each track sounds significantly different from all the others, a product of Lindsay's various guests and influences, which currently range from Missy Elliot to Brazilian bossa nova legends. Tracks like "Prefeelings," which combines classic bossa nova rhythms with spoken word by rapper Beans of the Anti-Pop Consortium, show Lindsay's true genius—the ability to bring together two brands of music that could not otherwise coexist in a song that purists of either rap or bossa nova would love.

While the music is solid at worst and brilliant at best, nothing is more impressive than Lindsay's lyrics. As an inheritor of great Portuguese-language poetry traditions, Lindsay churns out verses that genuinely get to the heart of human relationships: "Reinvent remind me/How we stuck to our fast/Fasten me down/Rub words away." Since the words are so brilliant, and Lindsay's voice is so irritatingly frail at some points—12-year-old boy frail, not Elliot Smith frail—you have to listen to certain tracks over and over again. But that's a very, very good thing. (Righteous Babe)

—Alan Schoenfeld

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