For Nico Paulo, connection is all about the hands. Her self-titled debut album is peppered with references to hand holding, a simple but important act of love and endearment. On “Hand Kisser”, Paulo longs for the touch of a lover’s hand, whereas on the precipice of blossoming/renewed love on “Now Or Never” she puts all the hope on physical touch and awareness. “We just hold our hands, and understand and kiss and try again,” she sings with a conciliatory tone over cooing voices in the background.
That Paulo keeps coming back to hands makes sense, as it ties in with her songwriting and musical style. Portuguese but now living in the contrastingly cooler climate of St John’s, Paulo has Gal Costa, Nico, Feist, and Victoria Legrand listed as inspirations in the album’s notes. She also recorded a cover of a track by Portuguese folk singer Zeca Afonso in 2021. Her influence is worldly, but coolly so. Thanks to production and engineering from Joshua Van Tassel and Tim Baker, Nico Paulo sounds in line with many of her aforementioned inspirations and contemporaries, but also manages to evoke the likes of Natalie Pratt too on closing track “Read My Mind” and even Joni Mitchell on “Learning My Ways”. The homespun style of Paulo’s music is the kind that is made in small rooms with good friends.
Paulo also recognises that love and adoration doesn’t happen like it does in fairy tales. On “Learning My Ways” she proclaims “Our love is a miracle / growing wild through concrete” as a sweet trumpet comes along to percolate the already honeyed air. Relationships require work and growth, and, as she captures in the song, even through adversity and hopelessness, love can still prevail. “The Master” has two opposing mindsets against each other, Paulo almost aghast at the indifference of her counterpart. “How come you never get angry? / How come you never get sad?,” she questions over wiry electric guitar figures. Come “Lock Me Inside”, she’s making a case for self-care, to step away from all the toils, troubles, and love itself so as to reflect and “slow down”.
While she never gets gritty and overly detailed, Paulo can hit on both a pointed tone (”This is it? / I came a long way”) as well as lightly interesting ways of viewing the world (“Have you ever thought of dancing / As moving into time”). She fares best though when she sounds like she’s mining her own personal experience, like on the closing track “Read My Mind”. Over a gorgeous growing arrangement, the song builds from guitar strums to a warm AM glow to a playful call and response of horns and woodwind. The track captures a wonderfully lovely feeling that you want to go on for twice as long as it does, and that will leave you light footed for the rest of the day. At the centre is a heartbreak though: “You know how to read my mind, don’t you? / You know how to break my heart in two.” Undoubtedly helped by the sumptuous arrangement, it feels like the untethering of sorrow, and you could simply float away with it.
And it’s the musical features that help the album flourish too. On her 2020 Wave Call EP (where Tim Baker also featured as a contributing musician and producer), Paulo’s music felt a little more freeform and less concise. Here on her debut album the arrangements are tighter and the ornamentation more handsome. “Time” has a flamenco flair (not unlike Caroline Polacheck’s “Sunset” in some ways) as mellow horns evoke a distant train; “Lock Me Inside” features some pretty piano figures over a dragging bass; and “ Lovers In The Street” even has a slightly shoegaze-y edge to it, crystallising time like the lyrics say with dreamy woodwind. There’s also tiny moments that evoke other artists, from the Grizzly Bear-like harmonizing male vocals on “Lock Me Inside” to the way Paulo vocalises and lingers on a particular phrase on “Hand Kisser”, making it feel like This Is The Kit’s Kate Stables snuck into the recording studio.
While Nico Paulo takes a little while to get fully into a comfortable stride (again, ending on its highest and best note by far), it’s a debut that lets you enter its world at your own pace. Sometimes it’s as light and airy as a summer’s breeze, and other times it sweeps you up in the moment, like stumbling into an argument between a couple at a house party. Be it mellow or tumultuous, Paulo is ready to hold your hand all the way through, because as evidenced here, she knows just how important that kind of connection is.
