Yonlu: Yonlu

In 2006,16-year-old Brazilian Vinicius Gageiro Marques asphyxiated himself in the home he shared with his parents in Porto Allegre, leaving behind a small oeuvre of songs he had written and recorded in his bedroom. With this album Luaka Bop gives him a posthumous North American release. He sounds like the person he possibly was, a thoughtful, intelligent kid with an absurdist sense of humour, smart without being boastful. If he’d lived in an low-budget movie he would have been the gawky lead, cute, nerdish and witty, who gets to kiss the wisecracking damsel at the end. She sees that his shyness covers a hopeful heart of gold; they go on to write this album and find themselves a cult audience of like-minded people who praise them for their emotional sincerity, their playfulness, the simplicity of their style. Sometimes this audience might grumble, saying that “The Boy and the Tiger” is too long, or that “Suicide Song”, though heartfelt, gets monotonous, but generally they think the couple is an inspiration to sweet geek youth everywhere. Yonlu is like that, without the couple.