CSS: Donkey

By: Dennis Cook

This is the politics of dancing in a nutshell. Using the dance floor as their bully pulpit, Brazil’s CSS (or Cansei de Ser Sexy if you must extend the abbreviation) rage against the darkness, red wine spilling from their shouting maw as they stand on tables and writhe despite the paralyzing gravity of our age. Fired by deliciously prickly feminist self-possession and a refined groove sensibility we haven’t seen much outside of Chic, Donkey (Sub Pop) kicks like a beast juiced up on the best parts of The B-52’s Whammy, ABC’s The Lexicon of Love, Grace Jones’ Nightclubbing and Public Image Ltd’s Happy?

There’s both jackass behavior and work animal sturdiness to Donkey, and this band is so smart I’m sure no potential association escaped them. Much like Hot Chip’s fantastic Made In The Dark (see JamBase review here), they show that there can be real smarts and top notch musicianship to blip infected music. In every way, CSS’ latest shows them evolving, trimming unnecessary elements and streamlining themselves into a highly polished bounce machine. Not once have I put this on and not eventually found myself spinning around, acting the happy fool and still feeling like my mind, as well as body, has gotten a lil’ workout.

As instantly grin-producing as tracks like “Art Bitch” and “Meeting Paris Hilton” were on their first Sub Pop release, this album moves them into more refined (though still nicely jagged) terrain. You can almost see the neon lines and dewy flesh of some fabulous nightspot as “How I Became Paranoid” or “Jager Yoga” jiggle in your face. But, the real philosophical underpinnings reveal themselves in joie de vivre lines like, “Times like these are nervous breaking/ Who’s got the nerves to let loose/ In times like these?” and especially the chirping hop of “Move,” which observes:

All the stars are about to die
But you don’t need to have insights
I don’t want to change your life
So please, hold me tight tonight

You better get your move on
Or all the good ones will have gone

This album makes one feel alive and frisky, ready to smear on face paint, squeeze into something groin-enhancing and go somewhere where sub-woofers makes your fat wiggle and you can swing a drink around with careless abandon. Viva existence!

Look at it, I know it’s true
Duct tape you in my roof
Kiss you in the photo booth
I believe that love was created just for me and you
People say it’s not but I know it true-uh-u!

Here’s the video for “Rat Is Dead (Rage).”

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