"He's the guy who sang the David Bowie covers - in Portuguese - in the Life Aquatic."

For better or worse, this is how word of Seu is currently, and most succinctly, being spread to non-aficionados of con temporary Brazilian music.

It's a great starting point, to be sure - catchy, cool, intriguing. And he certainly earned the hype - his performance adds idiosyncratic depth to the already vastly quirky Bill Murray vehicle.

The other easy reference is that he played Knockout Ned (a good guy turned gang leader) in the acclaimed Brazilian favela epic City of God.

Lucky for Seu Jorge, there is more to his story, and his music. With his second album, “Cru”- released this week, the 35-year-old singer-actor is suddenly a red-hot commodity everywhere he goes. Interviews, photo shoots, one British scribe calling him "the coolest man on the '

Chalk it up to the continuing mythical appeal of Brazilian music, in which Jorge has un equivocally taken his place, and to which he adds his own voice.

Cru has more than its share of heartbreaking love songs, rendered with a resonance that can only come from the land that brought us the Girl From Ipanema.

Accompanied by intuitive acoustic guitar, he sings of ill-fated relationships with a can dour, vulnerability and intimacy that we just don't get (and can barely fathom) in North American pop music.

On Bola de Meia (Sock-Filled Ball), he whispers a tender plea to a soon-to-be-ex-lover - "Nao faz bola de meia com meu coracao." ("Don't make a balled- up sock out of my heart.")

The sentiment resonates, whether or not you understand the lyrics. It comes from a man who comes from a country where romance and music are basic daily necessities, but also cherished national treasures, to be celebrated and, yes, sung. In Brazil, even sadness is mesmerizingly beautiful.

But before you can say, "What a pansy," Jorge flips the script. He slips in the shimmying samba Mania de Peitao, broaching his countrywomen's rampant silicone fetish.

He adapts Serge Gainsbourg's Chatterton, translating the morbid lyrics - "Chatterton, committed suicide / Kurt Cobain, committed suicide / Vargas, committed suicide / Nietzsche, went crazy / And me, I'm not doing so great" - into Portuguese, and delivering them with devilish relish.

He sings the Elvis Presley ballad Don't, straight - well, relatively OK, he turns it into a gently swaying samba, but he sings in English.

The album's most intriguing moment comes on the last song, Eu Sou Favela (I Am Favela), on which he tackles the thorny is sue of Brazil's ghettos.

"A favela e um problema social" (the favela is a social problem), he states, over and over, in the chorus.

He would know. Jorge grew up in the hillside slums of Rio de Janeiro. As he reaches the status of international pop culture curiosity, he has gained quite the vantage point.

Seu Jorge performs at a benefit for Les Amis de la montagne, tonight at Club Soda. Carioca Freitas opens. Tickets cost $25, available at Club Soda and Ticketpro. Call (514) 286-1010 or (514) 908-9090.

tdunlevy@ thegazette.canwest.com