Sopa de Letrinhas

The first album by Engenheiros do Hawaii sounds like a failed experiment that ended up being a discovery: Sopa de Letrinhas is the song that best captures that tension. Recorded in four weeks at RCA Studios in São Paulo, the track has a childlike playfulness —those lyrics that seem like a word puzzle— but also that air of teenage rebellion that already hinted at the band’s style. The mix of ska and reggae in the base gives it a playful rhythm, almost as if Humberto Gessinger’s bass and Carlos Maltz’s drums were playing at the same time someone whistled a disjointed tune. The most curious thing is that, amid that controlled chaos, Carlos Stein’s guitar riff repeats like a heartbeat, anchoring the song despite its apparent carelessness.

The song was born at a time when the band was still unsure of where to go. Longe Demais das Capitais, their 1986 debut album, was the only one with the original lineup —before Marcelo Pitz left the bass in 1987 to be replaced by Augusto Licks. The record label heavily promoted the album, pushing Toda Forma de Poder as the single and including two tracks in soap opera soundtracks. But Sopa de Letrinhas slipped in through the back door: at just 3 minutes and 8 seconds, it’s one of those pieces that doesn’t sound like the rest of the album, as if it had been recorded somewhere else or in another era. Perhaps that’s why it ended up being the one that lasts the longest, even after the band drastically changed their sound in the following years.