Expresso Transatlântico

(PT)

There is a Lisbon that cannot be captured on a postcard. It cannot be summed up in verses of longing or on a tourist brochure. It is a melting pot, constantly on the move, open to the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and the rest of the world. From this Lisbon, Expresso Transatlântico transforms the Portuguese guitar into the leading character of a musical film that is equally at home in an intimate club as it is at a major rock or world music festival.

At the heart of the trio is Gaspar Varela, an exceptional Portuguese guitarist and great-grandson of the legendary fado singer Celeste Rodrigues, an heritage that ensures a direct link to the fado house and the legacy of Amália. Alongside him, his brother Sebastião Varela takes up the electric guitar and Rafael Matos the drums, shifting fado into a territory where tradition engages, without blind reverence, with the city of today. They do not come to ‘evangelise’ fado, as they like to emphasise; rather, they come to prove that the DNA of fado can survive and flourish beyond the boundaries of the genre.

Following a debut EP presented at WOMEX 2022 (the world’s largest music fair), they released the album Ressaca Bailada in 2023. A work described by critics as a ‘dance of beauty and fury, longing for the future’, where fado intersects with rock, blues, funaná, samba and echoes of Portuguese-style westerns, amongst references ranging from Dead Combo to Zeca Afonso.

On stage, Expresso Transatlântico is something else entirely. The music takes on a life of its own, an urgency, a physicality that the recorded versions merely hint at.

They bring to MED their second and latest album, released in January this year. Trópico Paranóia, produced by Paulo Furtado (The Legendary Tigerman), takes on more risk and tension, looking squarely at a world in decline, without losing the festive pulse that defines it.

At a time when walls are being erected and diversity is viewed with suspicion, Expresso Transatlântico responds with a humanist celebration. Their diversity is a source of richness, not a threat.