Consumer Guide Album

Gilberto Gil: Expresso 2222 [Universal, 1993]
Gil's first post-exile album included just nine songs in 1973, was picked up by three seamlessly upbeat bonus tracks in 1993, and kept them in its 2008 U.S. edition. Dimmed by three years of firsthand London fog, his Anglophile popcraft immerses in carioca beats and funky acoustic guitar worthy of Brazil's future minister of culture, often too much so--the grooveful six-minute "Oriente" is downright dull. Fortunately, most of the tracks chew banana-flavored Chiclets and take their samba with bebop on the side. B+