Very Close to, if not actually in, the CD player:
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seen/heard ° listen ° preorder
stream full album ° seen/heard ° buy
“This is Not the Gayest Song Ever” (Cansei de Ser Sexy/Bonde do Role, Warsaw)
Ever find yourself watching television when you’re a little out of it – maybe you fell asleep with the tube on, and you haven’t quite woken up, yet... or you came home exhausted/drunk/high and are indiscriminately flipping through infomercials – and happen upon something that seems indescribably, perfectly funny? You’re laughing without thinking, your eyes are watering, your breathing’s desperate and raw, your stomach’s cramped. It’s this amazing, amazing discovery only you know about and O to the M.G. you can’t wait to tell everyone you know and what is it?!
Then you recognize the program. And the realization you’ve been enjoying something as inane and lack-witted as Yes, Dear embarrasses you to the extent you curl up in a ball, suck your thumb and question everything about your life, the universe, syndicated situation comedies.
Cansei de Ser Sexy (myspace) wants to put the “dumb” back into “good dumb fun.” The Brazilian sextet’s (five gals and a guy) Sub-Pop debut (what a stain on the company that once gave us Bleach... could this be the reason Sleater-Kinney decided to call it quits?) is synth-heavy mix of dancey styles under barked, broken English. The single is the clumsily titled “Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death from Above” (you can download it here, if you hate yourself), and it’s a good reminder why disco is a four-letter word.
If you’re the type of person who thinks “electroclash” is a punchline, not a genre, do yourself a favor and stay far, far away from the CD. Bravely (I have no medical insurance) I played it twice, yesterday, back-to-back. And I liked it a lot better, the second time through... but also felt myself getting woozy as brain cells bolted for any available exit.
The good thing about CSS is that while on record they sound like this:
Cansei de Ser Sexy – Meeting Paris Hilton (mp3) (buy)
...live, they sound a little more like this:
Local H – I Just Want Something to Do (Ramones cover) (mp3) (buy)
...to the extent that, instead of the Warsaw’s pierogies and kielbasa, I started craving chicken vindaloo.
CSS Live is a guitar-driven outfit – sometimes with three of them going, at once, their sole keyboard completely abandoned for serious stretches – and they’re blessed with one great guitarist, who added fat fills and raunchy licks while strutting around like she’d slipped through a wormhole from the set of Repo Man.
They’re nowhere near as aloof as their name – it’s Portuguese for “Tired of Being Sexy” – would suggest. Most of the band – they really, really don’t need three guitars – was adorably sloppy. Lead singer “Lovefoxxx” managed a lot of would-be punkish energy, calling for hands so she could crowd surf again and again (and again(*)), doing spittakes that’d have the French calling her a genius. She jumped into the crowd and – I think, I couldn’t see past the heads – crawled the venue’s floor. At the end of the concert, while aggressively tearing away at Madonna’s “Hollywood,” she ripped off her hair extensions (and, after thinking for a moment, didn’t toss them to the room). Awesome.
Essentially, though, L’foxxx is just a thoroughly engaging cheerleader. Compare the emotional tour-de-force of Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Art Star” to CSS’ smutty, cynical “Artbitch” (“I am so hardcore/I sound like crap and people ask for more... Lick-lick-lick my art tit, suck-suck-suck my art hole”) and you’ll find more layers to the latter band’s clothing (at one point Foxxx looked like The Hamburglar; by the end, she was down to her nylons) than its music.
There are moments where something unexpectedly honest or charming slips in. “Why is that we stand so still?” she speak-sings in “Off the Hook” with a real humble sense of regret. “People gonna start thinking we’re statues.” The delivery’s got the sort of emotional availability that gave Love is All’s bang-on-everything bouncy-bounce a real sense of purpose... and it lasts for almost a whole half-song, here.
During “Alcohol” the singer interviewed members of the crowd and dared to ask follow-up questions. “What is your name?” (Best answer: “Huh?”) “Do you like alcohol?” (“Yes,” of course.) “Me too. Why?”
If it’s easy to dismiss this band, it’s because they make it easy... even when armed with a self-effacing track like “CSS Suxxx” (awful, as a set opener). Y’know, kids, Primus sucked, too, but Primus sucked better.
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One of the guitarists, with her big ‘70’s glasses, looked so much like Gabe Kaplan’s wife on Welcome Back, Kotter I was dying to tell her about my Uncle Maury from Sheboygan.
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I first got my ticket (for the cancelled Avalon show – see, you don’t charge $20 for two acts that can barely scrape together 40 minutes of music each + a DJ) – because I went nuts how Bonde do Role(myspace) and their bratty Beasties-style in-the-red rapping humped all over “Man in the Box,” “You Shook Me All Night Long,” “Summer Lovin’.” To refresh your memory:
Bonde do Role – Melo do Tabaco (mp3)(buy CD/vinyl)
Still yummy.
The band is basically three MCs; one doubles as a DJ, but on stage he does little more than Press Play. The star is MC Marina Ribatski – awesome handle – who’s short and squat and totally makes that work. She came out in satin pink boxing shorts and a wifebeater – it looked like she’d been interrupted while doing laundry – and screamed and thrusted and rolled around ‘til she was so tangled in her mic chord her circulation must have been ebbing. Ribatski’s a great performer, and really the only reason to see this group live. DJ Gorky offers little but some impressively defined rolls of lard, and MC D’eyrot gets off a bit much on ordering his audience about (“If you don’t yell loud enough, we’re not going to play this next song!”).
*
Diplo is a DJ, and didn’t try to be anything but. I was there for maybe a half-hour of his set – and he started by lowering expectations, graciously calling himself the after-party. A good portion of the crowd stayed for, and enjoyed, his work. There’s not a whole lot to say about him. I liked the sped-up Chipmunk-style “Sure Shot?” I expected a little more world music in the mix?
(*)And again.
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Blog-blog-blog my art blog:
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The “Absolutely No Poop on the Bus Summer Tour” hits The Mummer Museum in Philadelphia. If you’re in the area and not up for that, you’re totally not alive. BYOFeathers.