Brazilian party band CSS don't quite fit with their local culture but have built a following abroad, writes SCOTT KARA
KEY POINTS:
Luiza Sa of dance rock party band CSS reckons they probably sell more records in New Zealand than in their native Brazil.
It might be a slight exaggeration, considering the 180 million or so difference in population between the two countries, but it's fair to say the quintet's music doesn't register in the football and samba-obsessed homeland.
"For us, we love it, it's got great food, and great friends, and it's fun, but at the same time it's kind of like a vacation place," she laughs, down the phone from a taxi in Sao Paulo.
And then there's the small matter of Brazil being a sexist country, something you feel the full effect of if you're a band of four girls and one guy (Adriano Cintra the drummer). Although, it has to be said, cute catsuit-wearing frontwoman, Lovefoxxx - triple X - is called Lovefoxxx for a very good reason.
"The media has this love-hate thing about us, partly because we're girls and Brazil is a very sexist country and we're always interviewed as girls who don't know how to play or because we're pretty, you know. They're stupid things that don't concern our music or our art.
"Brazil is a whole crazy world inside a world," she continues. "Everything is extreme and there's nothing in-between. I'm sad to say it but this is not our priority market and everyone in the band always has this feeling that we need to work outside Brazil."
Since the release of their debut album, Cansei de Ser Sexy in 2006, they've become big in Britain and Europe, and judging by their two visits to New Zealand, where they played their first riotous shows at the Kings Arms in January last year, they have a reasonable following here.
"We have been through a lot - emotionally and physically, everything to the extreme. You're working hard and sometimes we got to enjoy the travel but mostly we're just working. You can't compare the first show we did to the last one. The size of the world these days is different to us now, and the possibilities have changed. When we first went on tour, it was kind of romantic, and we thought it would be two months and we'd be back but we never did. We never stopped. Every time I play I love it" she giggles.
Many of these tour stories are documented on new album Donkey, with the mangled electronics and guitars of Left Behind a backdrop to Lovefoxxx singing about jumping up on tables in Helsinki to "dance my arse off until I die" and Give Up tells of other adventures in Amsterdam.
Sadly, there's no reference to New Zealand on the album although Sa remembers the band's Kings Arms shows well - "It was supposed to be one show and it sold out and it became two, and So So Modern supported us and they're like so cute." - and the black sand beaches out west where they took time out from their crazy tour schedule.
Other highlights on Donkey include the Pixies-meets-disco punk of Rat Is Dead (Rage), a song you can sing along to effortlessly, and the galactic 80s vibe of How I Became Paranoid.
There's more to the new album than to their debut, which had a handful of great party tunes like Let's Make Love and Listen to Death From Above, Off the Hook, and iPod ad soundtrack Music Is My Hot Hot Sex, but was lightweight and in danger of being a novelty.
This time round CSS - short for Cansei de Ser Sexy, which translates to "I got tired of being sexy" in Portugese, and is a quote they got from Beyonce - can play their instruments more competently. And, jokes Sa, even though the songs are about the same things as last time, like love, sex, partying, and boys, they are more refined.
Recording it at fancy Trama Studios in Sao Paulo was a stark contrast to the "backyard of Adriano's place" where CSS produced their debut.
"Your ear just changes, you start experimenting, and the music coming out is so much more elaborate. We are much more of a band because we've been playing together for three years solid and this album reflects that. It's live, but it's more complicated, and more difficult arrangements, and it's like everybody grew in a way, you know. It's more rock'n'roll, and mainly guitars, but we still have some songs that are fun too. But basically our relationship with English changed, so it's not like we're going to sit around and say, `Hot, hot, sex'.
"And Lovefoxxx wrote Let's Make Love, which is a very very cute lyric about love, and she did a new song, that's equally cute. And there were some angry lyrics on the first album but there's not so much this time. But what I feel from this album is more maturity because we've changed a bit."
LOWDOWN
Who: CSS
What: Brazilian dance rock party band made up of four girls, one guy
New album: Donkey, out Monday
Debut album: Cansei de Ser Sexy (2006)
