Sara Serpa and Andre Matos's "Night Birds"

Having lost the facility of remembering song lyrics around 1973, it's no impediment to my enjoyment to hear music sung in a language I can't understand, and practitioners of voice-as-instrument (Petra Haden, Jen Shyu, Texans Sarah Ruth Alexander and Lily Taylor) are among my favorite vocalizers. Add Portuguese vocalist-composer-improviser Sara Serpa to that list.

I first encountered Serpa in 2012 on Aurora, one of a triptych of albums she recorded with her New England Conservatory teacher/mentor, Third Stream pianist Ran Blake. Earlier this year, she turned up on bassist-composer Linda May Han Oh's The Glass Hours. Trained as a social worker, Serpa's musical projects include interdisciplinary works exploring the history of Portuguese colonialism in Africa (2020's Recognition) and the African travels of Nigerian writer Emmanuel Iduma (2021's Intimate Strangers). 

Her collaboration with guitarist Andre Matos dates back to 2005, and they recorded two albums (2014's Primavera and All the Dreams two years later) around the birth of their child Laurenco -- who contributes to their latest recording, Night Birds, along with a handful of other collaborators who serve as added colors in the duo's compositional palette. The album is scheduled for a September 29 release, on CD and download, via Portuguese indie Robalo Music.

Themes of familial connection and concern for our planet's uncertain future, which parents feel with special poignancy, permeate this material. The track "Family," with its dizzying modulations, includes Laurenco's voice amid its layers of sound. The songs "Counting" and "Watching You Grow" both carry a mother and child's sense of gentle play.

Matos and Brooklyn-based pianist Dov Manski blend electric and acoustic instruments seamlessly, creating an organically spacious sound. Drummer Joao Pereira, a regular collaborator of Serpa and Matos's, provides a floating, unobtrusive groove to a number of tracks. South Korean cellist Okkyung Lee contributes swooping glissandos to "Melting Ice" and "Lost Whale." Ethiopian-Swedish vocalist Sofia Jernberg adds her virtuosic tonal approach to the title track and "Underwater," intertwining and contrasting with Serpa's elegant, unadorned style. 

Both Lee and Jernberg are present on the album's heart -- the song "Degrowth," a call to reverse the mindless human drive to consume that is destroying our planet. All in all, Night Birds is a collection of haunting, atmospheric soundscapes, which convey a chilling message even a confirmed non-lyric listener like your humble chronicler o' events can recognize. The closing Bartok bagatelle serves as a fervent prayer for a future in the balance.