By now one of our most cherished and respected songwriters, Maria Reis has been steadily creating a legacy that will undoubtedly endure in the portuguese songwriting canon for years to come. Co-founder of the Lisbon based Cafetra label-collective, Reis spent her teenage years honing her craft, particularly with her co-leading role on Pega Monstro with her sister Júlia Reis, with albums like ‘Alfarroba’ and ‘Casa de Cima’ on Upset !the Rhythm and whose indefinite hiatus since 2018 opened the gateway for a prolific solo venture. After a raw debut EP released in 2017 – Maria -, 2019 saw the release of the celebrated ‘Chove na Sala, Água nos Olhos’, a definitive statement of Reis’ almost casual gift of painting vivid and impressionistic portraits of everyday life, conveying all the anger, resignation and melancholic joy of moving on. Two years later, following a string of widely praised live appearances, Reis records the ‘Flor da Urtiga’ EP with assistance from Noah Lennox aka Panda Bear, a sweeter affair, crossed by a witty irony that tackles such subjects as family, love and toxic masculinity, through layered acoustic guitars, lightweight percussion and joyful harmonies. ‘Benefício da Dúvida’ from 2022, strips back most of the production to rely on simple but affirmative arrangements assembled with the help of her sister Júlia and longtime collaborator Leonardo Bindilatti.

And now, almost two years on the clock after ‘Benefício da Dúvida’, Maria Reis returns with a newfound maturity with ‘Suspiro…’ – Portuguese for sigh. Created in close collaboration with Tomé Silva – a young and versatile musician and producer who’s been recently leaving a mark on the portuguese scene – and recorded in the intimacy of the latter’s bedroom, ‘Suspiro…’ doesn’t cut ties with that recent past but reflects the learning process embedded in previous ventures in its lyrics and arrangements, towards song’s eternity. A projection of different emotional states and physical spaces throughout these years, ‘Suspiro…’ carries in the apparent simplicity of its title the plurality of meanings found in such a natural act, from anger to being in love, from resignation to resilience. Life in a sigh? We’ve been further from that.

An attentive and sensitive observer of both intimate and surrounding spaces, Maria Reis continues to explore wordplay in her very personal manner, a poetic act as brutally honest as filled with imagery allusions, enchanting the mundane with lyricism. Touched by a resigned and dreamy melancholy, ‘Suspiro…’ settles, for the most part, on electric and acoustic guitar lines, simple but expressive rhythms, floating vocal harmonies and a voice almost tangible in the way it conveys memorable hooks without fear of appearing both fragile and tenacious. ‘Amor Serpente’s low key tragedy turned mantra for life, the blissed pop of ‘Estagnação’ or ‘T-shirt’, ‘Holofote’s flailing rawness, the mesmerizing sparkle of ‘Pico’, ‘Meta Data’s electrified energy or the playful keyboards and sound effects of ‘Coisas do Passado’ composing a lively portrait of reality and expectations where we can all see ourselves reflected in. For Maria, almost a second nature, that through all her honesty, know how and imagination, reaches a new life with ‘Suspiro…’.

“Alegria Terminal” is born from the dust of domestic life, between the calluses of everyday life and the observation of the mundane. It is both a narrated archive of what we experience and a half-hour escape from the inconveniences of being alive.
With the sound typical of a Vaiapraia LP—the fierce fuel of percussion, the gallop of bass lines, the colorful textures torn by the guitar, and the harmonic bed of the keyboard—“Alegria Terminal” offers eleven pieces that form a puzzle assembled with rigorous personal criteria.
Beyond the usual songs of heartbreak and petulant rebellion (“Kolmi”), there is a palpable sense of defeat and disappointment that is supported by a sharp sense of humor (“Ar Com Ar”). One can also hear the fast pace of routine (“Tupperware Furado”) and the life experience associated with changes of home, city, country, scale, language, and dialect (“Way Way”).
“Alegria Terminal” offers a taste of effervescent substances that bring luminous exceptions to everyday life, as a possible cure, or an approximation of the divine. It is as if the heat of rock and the hunt for the song were a stoic elbow jab to the boring decline of Western civilization.

It’s Júlia Reis and Pedro Marques. Together they left the capital for the countryside, returning to Lisbon regularly for family and academic reasons, but now with an unprecedented return to the mixer. Júlia Reis (from Lisbon), co-founder of Cafetra Records, and half of Pega Monstro, and Pedro Marques (from Tondela), a frequent and acclaimed DJ in the Lisbon scene in the 2010s, debuted their ensemble more than 10 years ago at the legendary Lounge. With renewed alchemy and two daughters later, they bring assorted treasures in their suitcase, just waiting to be shared.