One of the most cherished and respected voices of Portuguese songwriting, Maria Reis has left us a legacy that will undoubtedly endure in this country’s songwriting canon. Co-founder of the Cafetra collective and label, Reis began to show an innate appetite for songwriting from an early age, particularly with Pega Monstro, the band she formed with her sister Júlia Reis and with whom she left us anthems such as ‘Akon’, ‘Amêndoa Amarga’ and ‘Partir a Loiça’. After her hiatus in 2018, and in a growing process of purification and audacity, she has been working solo with an affirmative power and sensitivity all her own.
After a first EP, still somewhat timid and raw – Maria – released in 2017, it was in 2019 that she gave a definitive start to her music in her own name with the release of the celebrated ‘Chove na Sala, Água nos Olhos’. An album that fully revealed her almost casual ability to paint impressionistic and vivid portraits of the mundane, bringing together all the anger, resignation and melancholic joy of the road. Two years later, following a series of iconic live appearances, she recorded ‘Flor da Urtiga’ with production by Noah Lennox tcp Panda Bear. A sweeter document, shot through with a fine irony, where stories of family, love and male toxicity were underpinned by layers of acoustic guitar, light percussion and heavenly harmonies.
Immune to obvious rules and expectations, 2022’s ‘Benefit of the Doubt’ takes on a more stripped-down production that allows the songs to breathe at their most essential. Based on simple but vital arrangements, and featuring the participation of her sister Júlia and production by accomplice Leonardo Bindilatti, ‘Benefício da Dúvida’ goes from the cascades of feedback of ‘Lobisomem’, to the dreamy vocal harmonies of the title track or the quiet desperation of ‘Elefante na Sala’, in a whole that is as honest as it is brave in its progression.
After what can be seen as a short and medium-length trilogy and exactly two years since ‘Benefício da Dúvida’ closed that same cycle, in a constant process of learning, Maria Reis returns to releases with ‘Suspiro…’. An album created in close collaboration with Tomé Silva, captured in the intimacy of her bedroom, and which, without cutting with that still recent past, reflects a lyrical and arranging maturity only possible for those who have recognized all the previous teachings in order to reach a new level for the eternity of song. The album’s 11 songs make up a mosaic of real and imagined experiences, all of which can be mirrored in one way or another. In essence, something that Maria Reis has always done with remarkable knowledge, honesty and grace.
