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She remains one of Brazil’s most celebrated recording artists and has maintained her reputation as one of the country’s premier interpreters. However Gal’s recent releases have seen her become increasingly reliant on the well-thumbed songbook of Brazilian classics, leaving the sneaking impression that she had lost the appetite to challenge either herself or her audience.

Happily, Hoje reverses this trend. On it we find Gal engaging with the current generation of Brazilian songwriting talent to produce her most vital recording in recent memory. Recorded in collaboration with the veteran producer and keyboardist Cesar Carmago, the set was conceived as a showcase for the work of young, little known composers — although MPB capos di tutti capi Caetano Veloso and Chico Buarque both weigh in with one new track apiece. The Brazilian contributions are nicely complemented by the Congolese singer/songwriter Lokua Kanza, who provides three tracks of warm and hazy beauty.

While the selected mix of bossa, ballads and traditional MPB rarely strays from comfortably familiar territory, the quality of the songwriting is uniformly high throughout. Gal’s ever-lovely vocals are now rich with a mature sensuality and the overall tone is one of a gently-affecting lounge bar sophistication. You could complain that there is nothing here that really takes either Gal or the listener out of their comfort zone but that’s hardly the point. This is finely-crafted music to warm the soul — and that’s just fine by me.