Sexy beasts
CSS formed as a joke. Now the Sao Paolo rock group are having the last laugh. Sophie Heawood caught up with them in New York
CSS are a rock band who play loud guitars, write songs about Paris Hilton being a bitch and have been snapped up by Sub Pop, the legendary Seattle-based record label who nurtured Nirvana, Mudhoney and Wolf Eyes. So it comes as some surprise to learn that they are in fact a bunch of young Brazilian women and one gay man who met at art school in Sao Paolo and began a band as a joke because they couldn't play any instruments. Despite being in awe of their legendary label mates, ask them who they listened to while making their debut album and they mention Christina Aguilera, Kelis and Britney Spears. CSS are more than a little confusing.
Just as well then, that said album, an eponymous work which is actually a compilation of various of their Brazilian releases, is a sexy, twisted and hilarious beast. It's a feminine take on post-punk, with vocals that veer between harsh shouting, icy electroclash and a more sensuous tone, driven by bass-heavy funk and a real pop sensibility in the hook. It's the most perplexing thing to come out of Brazil since Ronaldinho, and something which Sub Pop's co-founder, Jonathan Poneman, claims to be "enormously excited" about.
The band have now learned to play "properly", though they've lost none of their giddy excitement about the joy of being in a band, or about the smut they can get away with in their English-language lyrics. Sitting on a bed with all six of them feels like trying to ride a space-hopper with a litter of newborn puppies, wriggling and giggling and trying desperately not to fall off.
That the bed is in New York's Chelsea Hotel provides even more titillation, as the band have been eagerly searching for the spot where Sid Vicious killed Nancy. It seems that room no longer exists - no matter, they amuse themselves by breaking onto the roof instead. Their band name stands for Cansei de Ser Sexy, which translates as Tired of Being Sexy, and New York style magazines love them, as do the trendy Brooklyn audience who they will wow later today with songs such as Artbitch and Music Is My Hot Hot Sex.
Yet CSS still seem to be confused by the nature of attention they are receiving. "People in Brazil ask how we can be tired of being sexy when we are so ugly," says Ana Rezende, one of the band's several skinny-limbed and well-tattooed guitarists, as the others howl with laughter. "In Brazil. they call us little monsters," adds her fellow guitarist Luiza Sa. "This guy said we were the ugliest thing he had ever seen." "So it's confusing when we talk to people in other countries," claims Lovefoxx, the beguiling half-Japanese frontwoman who writes most of their lyrics. "It scares me," she adds, looking about as scared as Mike Tyson. "People have been going on about how sexy our songs are, how we're obsessed with sex, and we're like, are we? And then we realised we are! But actually we never noticed it before."
Adriano Cintra, whom it would be tempting to call the band's token male, were he not responsible for writing most of their music, reckons it must be because Brazilians talk about rump-pumpy so much that they don't really notice it. A likely story.
"It's like our name, people get so many meanings out of it, like, oh these are women who are sick of being sex objects and they want to be known for their intelligence," adds Rezende. So it doesn't mean that? "No! It doesn't mean anything!" Meaningless their name might be, but purposeless they are not. Their current single, Let's Make Love and Listen to Death from Above, was written with the sole purpose of getting the Canadian rock duo Death from Above 1979 to look at them.
"I wanted them to Google themselves and find us," says Lovefoxx, whose dream came true at their recent Toronto show, where DFA's Sebastian Grainger approached her and said he wanted to take a photograph. "And I was talking to him and I was not freaking out, I was just talking like a regular person!" "What, you moved your mouth and noise came out?" ask her band. "Yeah, just like a regular person, it's strange, I know," she deadpans.
The silly question is pertinent: Lovefoxx is nothing like a regular person. A former presenter on a late-night Brazilian music video show, she used to entertain herself by wandering around Sao Paolo with a beer and an iPod, much to the consternation of passers-by. "People look at you with anger in their eyes, like they hate you, because you are dancing in the street at 3pm," she says.
Sometimes her annoyance turned to violence, such as during a ruckus with a nightclub host who initially refused her entry without ID and then said she could come in because she was famous, which annoyed her even more. "I had just seen Fight Club and so I said, 'This conversation is over,' just like in the film. Then he said that I was just a dirty little bitch from CSS, so I said, 'you know what you are? You're a fat guy with titties that wears a tiara'." The rest of the band had to dive in to save her when he lunged for her.
As for Paris Hilton, she got a CSS song of her own because Rezende used to ogle pictures of her on a fotolog of drunk celebrities. "She was always photographed drunk, cross-eyed, falling over. She's drunk because she's rich and she's rich because she's famous and she's famous because she's rich. Which is really weird. It seemed kind of cool at the time, but now ... "
They're no longer convinced. A Brazilian TV station tried to set up a meeting between the band and the star when she was appearing in a Brazilian shopping mall. It failed, but the band were amused to hear that the heiress has been seen dancing to their song at a party.
CSS owe some of their success to the American DJ Diplo, currently touring with them. He first heard the group when he was in Brazil stocking up on baile funk, the sound of the favelas. Don't be fooled into thinking that CSS come from poverty themselves though - the shanty towns of Rio are a world away from the Sao Paolo art scene where the members of CSS found each other. Several of the band studied art or film at a leading private college. Cintra made good money writing jingles and bass player Iracema Trevisan is a fashion designer - the band joke about her nose job.
Sao Paolo is also a city that lacks a decent alternative music scene. "Everything is either too big or too small. Brazil is full of boring bands who just stand there. Like those people who come to clubs and won't dance," explains Sa. "In Portuguese we call it holding the wall. We only like the people who get drunk and go crazy on the dancefloor." With their pedigree it looks like they shouldn't have any trouble finding a fair few of those.
· CSS's Cansei de Ser Sexy is out now on Sub Pop. The band play The Stealth, Nottingham, on September 2, then tour
posted by nscafuro @ 6:29 AM
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