Antologia 67/03

Antologia 67/03 is a 34-track anthology of Caetano Veloso's career from the late 1960s to 2003. A compilation like this, from a true giant like Caetano Veloso, is of course bound to contain a lot of gems. However, the selection of songs here is rather unconventional, omitting nearly ubiquitous landmark tracks such as "Alegria, Alegria," "Terra," "Você é Linda," and "Queixa," and instead including many beautiful but lesser known songs, such as "Muito Romântico," "Cajuína," "Lua, Lua, Lua," and "Maria Bethânia." One could in fact almost call this an "alternative" anthology. There is no particular order among the tracks, chronological or otherwise, which perhaps makes some of the songs seem a bit out of context. Dealing with an artist with such an extraordinarily rich and colorful back catalog as Caetano Veloso, you could always argue about songs that could or should have been included and others that should have been omitted from a compilation like this one. But if the purpose of the compilers behind this anthology was to create a different and slightly alternative collection of Caetano Veloso's work during the last five decades, they have succeeded reasonably well. ~ Philip Jandovsky