Everything Is Possible: The Best of Os Mutantes

1	Ando Meio Desligado 3:03
2	Ave, Lucifer 2:19
3	Dia 36 4:02
4	Baby 1971 3:40
5	Fuga No. II 3:41
6	Cantor de Mambo 4:38
7	Adeus Maria Fulo 3:06
8	Desculpe, Babe 2:51
9	El Justiciero 3:54
10	Panis et Circenses 3:38
11	A Minha Menina 4:41
12	Bat Macumba 3:09
13	Le Premier Bonheur du Jour 3:36
14	Baby 1988 3:00

Barnes & Noble

Thirty years and thousands of miles away from home, Brazil's Os Mutantes have incited an unlikely frenzy for the sounds of São Paulo in the '60s. Their "Austin Powers" meets "Black Orpheus" vibe has been thrilling alt.rock fans and world music buffs alike since original Mutantes imports first trickled into specialty record shops. Now this greatest-hits disc, compiled by David Byrne, should be one of the most crowd-pleasing releases of the year. And why not? Fin de siècle fancies for bizarre sonic experiments, Latin rhythms, and retro everything collide in the perfect pop of this trio, who exploded in a psychedelic storm at the beginning of Brazil's Tropicalia movement. Alongside Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil and Tom Zé, the brothers Baptista (Arnaldo and Sérgio) and Rita Lee Jones made music as a political statement. But Os Mutantes, in their Beatles-fascinated, stoned-immaculate aspirations toward pop-dom, need far less translation than poets like Veloso and theoreticians like Zé. Their sound is equally at home alongside Santana as Esquivel; their technicolor tropical images happily jammed between Tom Jobim and The Monkees. Culling the band's most rhythmic material, from the faux cha-cha "El Cantor de Mambo" (inspired by Sergio Mendes) to Gilberto Gil's samba rock "A Minha Menina" and Caetano's naif bossa nova "Baby" (in two versions), EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE! is the perfect passport to this summer's hippest scene. Mark Schwartz

All Music Guide

The first major-label release of Mutantes material was this 1999 compilation, put together by longtime Brazilian fan David Byrne through his Luaka Bop label. Including tracks from the band's late-'60s and early-'70s LPs (available separately through Omplatten), Everything Is Possible is a solid collection that only includes 14 tracks but does spotlight Mutantes' tremendous diversity. From the birth of tropicalia on their first album from 1968 (wildly experimental pop songs like "Panis Et Circenses" and "Bat Macumba") plus their later, more straight-ahead incarnations, the album gives beginners a solid place to start. The inclusion of both versions of the rather tiresome Janis Joplin retread "Baby" is a bit regrettable, but all around, Everything Is Possible gets it right better than could be hoped from a domestic compilation. John Bush