CSS: Donkey
Friday, 25 Jul 2008 17:30
Are the Brazilians still tired of being sexy?
Sub Pop/WEA, out July 21st.
In a nutshell...
Slick, superficial, simple, snappy, stationary
What's it all about?
Given that the subject matter on CSS's debut album, 2006's Cansei de Ser Sexy, covered getting jiggy with it to the sound a defunct Canadian dance-punk duo (Let's Make Love And Listen To Death From Above), rodent resembling heiress's (Meeting Paris Hilton) and, erm, art tits (Art Bitch), pinning down what Donkey's all about is likely to be as simple as brushing a sharks teeth.
The band have said that Rat Is Dead (Rage), the closest CSS have ever got to aping the grunge sound their label Sub Pop was built on, is about their former manager, Eduardo Ramos, who they ditched because of alleged financial treachery that has yet to be resolved. Jager Yoga seems to be a paean to getting ripped off your wotsits on German digestif and scourge of Wetherspoons, Jagermeister, while first single Left Behind seems to be singer Lovefoxxx lamenting having to leave her fiancee - Klaxons guitarist Simon Taylor-Davis – to go on tour.
Who's it by?
Since the ghost train synths of Lets Make Love... steamed into the ears of every hipster from Whoreditch to Harajuku in the summer of 2006, nary a breath has been spoken about CSS without mentioning the words 'Brazil' (they formed in Sao Paulo in 2003), electro (the aforementioned synths) and Beyonce (Ms Knowles was reported to have said she was "tired of being sexy" or "cansei de ser sexy" in Portuguese, hence the band's abbreviated moniker). This humble hack sees no reason to buck the trend here.
Mentioning Brazil in relation to the quartet could soon become somewhat incongruous though. Bassist Iracema Trevisan quit the band in April, to be replaced by Reading-born drummer Jon Harper, which saw former sticksman Adriano Cintra take up the bass, himself relocating to London this year, along with guitarists Ana Rezende and Carolina Parra and Lovefoxxx, who is moving in with her Warwick-born fiancee. Third guitarist Luiza Sa, who presumably hates London, her bandmates or both, is off to Brooklyn.
As an example...
"Stars above try to guess/Where's my gin, where's my glass?/All this mess comes from your ass/F**k with us we are CSS" – Jager Yoga
"I'm gonna get on to the table/And dance my ass off till I die/I'm gonna hopefully forget you/And quit those nightmares I've been having" – Left Behind
Likelihood of a trip to the Grammys
While garnering the kind of across the board critical praise that most bands would castrate their drummer for, with everyone from the scenester bloggers to seasoned broadsheet muso's getting their knickers in a twist about Brazil's best-known export since, well, nearly every great footballer ever, this wasn't exactly reflected in CSS's commercial performance. Only a re-release of Lets Make Love... scrapped into the UK's top 40, while in the States they made about as much impact as, well, nearly every great footballer ever.
However, with the professional sheen of Donkey superseding the sometimes shambolic sound of their debut album, we could yet see one of Lovefoxxx's trademark catsuits cartwheeling up a red carpet.
What the others say
"Not only have all the rough edges been sanded down but so have the feedback, the swearing and the hot under the collar sauce." – John Doran, The Quietus
"If The Ting Tings had an ounce of musicality, this would be how they would sound." – Guy Purssell, Neu! Magazine
So is it any good?
The majority of bands will tell you that difficult second album syndrome is as much as a myth as difficult second season syndrome is for promoted teams who have managed to survive their first season in Premier League. However, with proof adequately provided by Reading FC dropping back into the second flight of English football like a sack of spuds particularly bad at scoring goals, these 'myths' have a habit of frequently proving themselves to be based in fact.
Let's take a butchers at bands from the last decade shall we? The Strokes, the Vines, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Scissor Sisters – all produced debut albums that were more critically acclaimed than Alex Turner farting into a paper bag and all produced follow ups that were but a pale facsimile of the inspiration and passion they had previously manifested, from which their careers have yet to recover.
There are many reasons this can happen. The band rushes out a second album after having toured themselves to death promoting the first. A change in the bands line up or support staff upsets the delicate equilibrium on which their efforts were based. On seeing that there is a cash cow just waiting to be milked, the band's record label steps in with a big name producer and expensive studio, simultaneously draining them of all ingenuity and originality.
In the process of recording Donkey, CSS seem to be displaying all three of these classic symptoms of difficult second album syndrome. CSS toured their debut album relentlessly up until the end of last year, with Donkey being recorded almost as soon as the band could make it back to their homeland. Already they are back on the road, and nowhere is this punishing schedule more apparent than the first single off the album, Left Behind. While initially it sounds as hook-laden and enthusiastic as the CSS of old, repeated listening reveals it a pedestrian stab at new wave synth rock, infused with as much passion as Moira Stewart reading a telephone directory out loud.
While the band have publicly declared themselves to not be missing Iracema Trevisan, claiming that her elementary bass playing had held the band back musically, only the most die hard CSS fan would be able to laud Beautiful Song, a half-baked take on Let's Make Love, as anything above competent, surely the antithesis of what the previous saucy, six-headed party monster incarnation of the band had stood for.
Whether Warner's looked at CSS and thought there was money in them thar hills is anyone's guess, but there's no doubting that Donkey has seen the DIY aesthetic and sleazy belligerence that made Cansei de Ser Sexy so beguiling clipped back, filed down and rounded off, so that even the snarling guitar of How I Became Paranoid sounds neutered.
While Donkey could never be described as a bad album, it's as disappointing as biting into a donut and finding out some goon forgot to inject the jam. Only Believe Achieve and Air Painter escape the malady that infects the rest of Donkey. The first is a genuinely gripping acoustic-synth stomp, the second a moving yet galloping love letter. Both offer hope that CSS are not truly tired of being sexy.
5/10
Kelvin Goodson
"Hi Everyone, Just wanted to say I found a free download of 'Rat is Dead' off CSS's new Album 'Donkey' - Its also MP3 which is Sweet! I believe the company, 7Digital are also offering the album for a fiver?which is cool :-)
http://www.7digital.com/artists/css/donkey/02?addtobasket=true?partner=532" - Alex Smith
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