CSS, La Liberación
Reviewed by: Chris Polley
This was going to be my next entry in my Time-Lapse Track-by-Track Review series, but a combination of not having the time/energy to tediously edit 42 minutes of video into a compact 2-3 minute summation and the fact that this album just isn’t even fun or engaging enough to merit me vamping for the camera for over a half-hour changed that idea. And I was one of the few people that at least enjoyed the Brazilian dance-pop group’s sophomore effort Donkey enough to blast it in my car and sing along, even if I didn’t necessarily think any of the songs were great. At least the melodies were there. Sure they lost a lot of their humor and grit that catapulted their success in 2005 with their semi-self-titled Cansei de Ser Sexy, but I still appreciated the hip-shaking they managed to induce, even with a glossier and more self-serious approach to songwriting and producing. So I was hoping for at least the same with their third full-length, La Liberación, especially because typically the hipster-approved band move is to polarize with the second record and then tread back to home base with the follow-up to regain one’s lost footing.
“Hits Me Like a Rock”
If you’ve seen CSS live, however, you probably were one step ahead of me in predicting that they don’t really care much about catching lightning in a bottle twice. Despite putting a distant (in today’s day and age) three years between releases, they seem to be the kind of rowdy bunch that doesn’t think things through too much. They jump into the studio after touring and sweating on stage for a number of months, get everything down, and then let the people behind the mixing board clean it up until something salvageable for the label is found. The first time around it was pretty simple because they didn’t yet have the notoriety that made compression tweakers and EQ scientists flock to the rough tracks and turn them into something palatable for consumption beyond the indie crowd that actually savors the texture of a one-off recording. Not only does it better approximate the live experience (the debut wasn’t necessarily lo-fi, but it was immediate and raw), but it also doesn’t sound overly labored, like it’s a product instead of a document. Yet, like I said, Donkey already suffered from this polished molestation, but I found at least the charm of their wry dance floor anthems still present. It sounded like they hadn’t let their new found success get to them quite yet – that they still knew their place even if they couldn’t or didn’t want to control what happened to their songs after they left the booth.
Now it just sounds like they have less interest in rousing than just going through the motions along with their producers. And I hate to be the guy that blames the “major label”, because it really doesn’t unilaterally kill every counterculture artist that joins its ranks, but Universal’s subsidiary V2 honestly doesn’t have the best track record: Bloc Party, Ra Ra Riot, The White Stripes (okay I may be in the minority on that last one), the list goes on. They seem to have a knack for bringing on bands that have some genuine unique talent behind them, and then neutering their sound so that they fit some antiquated pre-determined palate for the mid-90s set. Some have been able to avoid it, such as Grandaddy’s should-be-canonical The Sophtware Slump, but even that band eventually nosedived with the mediocre successor Sumday, and even more so, Just Like the Fambly Cat. Should I solely blame a faceless corporation? No, but it sure feels good to, especially when the pattern’s too strong not to.
“You Could Have It All”
As for the songs themselves, there’s just so much limpness here that it’s often hard to tell when one ends and another begins. The backbone of many of the songs on Donkey might have been restrained and limited by the production, but they were at least still there if sought out and played loud enough. Here, they’re non-existent. This isn’t definitively a bad thing, as some of the best dance songs are airy and ethereal, but when you’ve got Lovefoxxx’s aggressive pop snarl on top of the mix, it just sounds wrong if there’s nothing there to back her up. In concert, the second most notable thing about the band behind their lead singer’s flamboyantly cocky stage presence is the bassist/lead songwriter Adriano Cintra pummeling steadily and furiously behind it all, providing the main thrust that inspires so many to hop along with every chorus and nod attentively through every verse. Now lost in the shuffle, Cintra barely registers as part of the band, even though he’s the one that started the thing. You could pump up your subwoofer to trick yourself into thinking otherwise, but even then it almost only highlights the drooping nature of every low-end groove – manufactured and plopped down instead of firing out with disregard for consequence like their best tracks from past records (“Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death From Above”, “Alala”, et al.).
The next thought that might come to mind for the rationalist, the one who likes to give even the most blatantly uninteresting records the benefit of the doubt (i.e. me), is well maybe they’re not trying to be a dance-pop band anymore. Perhaps they’re trying to prove that you can do a bunch of sixteenths on a hi-hat and it doesn’t automatically categorize as an attempt at a pulsating rhythm. Perchance they’re employing soaring and beeping synths not as a means to raise the listener’s hands to the club’s ceiling, but for some other as-of-yet-unknown reason. The tough part about this is, and despite the sarcasm imbued in the previous sentences I honestly find myself struggling with this, what else could they conceivably be trying to do? Why bring down the tempo so much that it’s hard to find a way to gyrate pleasurably the uncatchy monotone refrain of “City Grrrl”? Why retread so much of the same territory from Donkey but cancel the wall-of-sound approach and replace it with something resembling a half-attended beach party where everyone’s on Quaaludes? The only answer I can feasibly come to after such confusion and searching is that they simply have gotten tired. I know I would. Sometimes you just want to bring things down a notch to avoid the headaches and further exhaustion. And really, this is okay. Even if it doesn’t do the trick for me, it really is okay.
“Fuck Everything”
Because truth be told, if you can get yourself in the mindset of someone’s who run so fast for so long, the record becomes a lot more easier to listen to without feeling an itching yearning that will never get scratched. Think less Peaches, more Trio. It may not be your thing, but it’s hardly terrible. It’s even got a little bit of temporary novelty to it. “Echo of Love” feels so slight and unobtrusive that it actually feels like what they were going for. It’s not a stomper or a barn burner; just a simple pop song with a decent hook. When they’re not trying to replicate their former selves, albeit with less motivation, La Liberación almost comes off as cute, that is until Lovefoxxx tries to once again sneer her way through her lyrics, which are now a pale imitation of the entertaining combination of celebration and angst that she was good at on the first record. Ignore the words, though, and you’ll get yourself a just fine 42 minutes of background music. Inoffensive may have been the last thing CSS were going for when they started out, but maybe, just maybe, just like I don’t really feel much like pulling out the camera and being inventive with my language, facial expressions, body language, and editing technique, they don’t really feel much like shocking you anymore with wild theatrics, lyrical commentary, and brazen melodies. They’re saving all their energy up for the live show, methinks.