Ed O'Brien on Popload Music

Brazil came into Ed O'Brien's life during OK Computer, when the band became very big and he felt empty. He acknowledges it is an old story, the assumption that success will fill a hole and the discovery that it does not. What helped was Brazilian music, which he came to through Jobim and Tropicália and which struck him as coming straight from the heart.

He started visiting with his wife, had what he describes as a profound spiritual experience there in 2002, and later told the band he wanted a year out to live in the São Paulo countryside with young children. The children went to a village school where nobody spoke English and they spoke no Portuguese, and they learned through play.

He was raised in the countryside, then spent 20 years in London, and being in the Atlantic forest among the birds, butterflies, hills and storms made him feel alive in a way he had not for years. Carnival in Rio and the samba schools did the rest, and the writing followed, including the track named for the country.

The last stretch is darker. The second lockdown stopped a lifetime of keeping busy and forced him to sit with what he calls the ghosts of his childhood.