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Words: kicking_k
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Photography: Simon Fernandez
As you will have already read in sundry other
rags, Cansei de Ser Sexy are from São Paulo,
Brazil; have a self-titled album out featuring
indie/electro tracks with snarky and sometimes
ironic titles you can dance to (if you wish); dress
well; know Diplo and Bonde do Role; have
their own logo; are “tired of being sexy”
(like Beyoncé), <3 pop music but m/fair-to moderate
hard (harder live); are five girls and
one guy; blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda.
Many of these same autopilot intros will also
have you believe CSS defy the laws of physics
by being ‘hot’ and ‘cool’ the same time. Que?
Your more cynical peers will loft an eyebrow
fringeward and insinuate the following: that
the band were put together by a producer; that
they were started as a joke; that they’re only
getting media exposure ‘cause they’re girls;
and worse, hipster princesses who do playback;
that they’re basically a pop band. Others of
your acquaintance (you know the ones I mean)
will attempt to outflank even that by airily
conceding all those points before accusing the
cynic of being a beardy rockist who’s forgotten
how to have fun, while opening their eyes as
wide as is practically possible and pole-dancing
against their leg. Then the pair will sneer at
each other, and turn to YOU.
I’m not here to tell you what to reply. It’s
a tightrope over a minefield, but we all knew
that when we signed up to MySpace. And
anyway – enough about you. Me and CSS are
sitting in an insultingly ersatz faux Brazilian
patio beach bar tucked down a London
backstreet (I’m thinking: this will make an ironic
backdrop) – complete with deckchairs and grass
matting plus favela chic graffiti. I ask if a single
thing looks halfway authentic. The answer
takes a while coming. “We have sand…”
manages laidback guitarist Caro, half-heartedly
gesturing toward the few feet of fake beach
abutting the car park.
Do I know how to set a tone or what? And,
for the record, both your imaginary friends are
wrong – and this is why…
In 2004, Brazilian record company Trama set up
a community site for bands to plug their music
and bug the industry. When an unknown band
zoomed to the top of the download charts
with a messy fistful of info-age sex jams, the site
launched a virtual label of its own especially for
them. Ana, guitars too, very together and in
control (excepting the wayward hair that
constantly shadows her face), explains: “We’re
not in the Top 10 any more ‘cause they have
these hardcore rock…” “Emo bands…Brazil
is infested with them,” finishes Adriano,
producer, multi-instrumentalist but mostly
drummer, on my left, reminding me of nothing
more than some pulp fiction private eye.
But before all that: “When we met, she
had a Fotolog [proto-Flickr online photo blog >,
she had a Fotolog, Lovefoxxx was in the Top
10 Fotologs in the world…” says Adriano.
Lovefoxxx, the singer and lyricist, whose voice
melts through her words on my Dictaphone
tape, leaps to the defensive.
“Because it was just when Fotolog was kind
of starting, and I had the job I hated the most,
so I stayed on Fotolog, like, all day talking with
people all over, Canada, Japan, just talking with
interesting people.”
Inevitably (in retrospect) the six – all in thrall
to computer-controlled day-jobs – found, and
commented upon, each others’ pictures. Soon,
there was a band. And shortly thereafter,
a band Fotolog.
css suxxx
Anyone that missed the (obvious) selfdeprecating
humour inherent in the band’s
name should have any remaining delusions
dismissed by the first track on the album,
‘CSS Suxxx’, which turns the title into a antianthemic
chant. And yes, they play it live.
And yes, the crowd join in.
Take a virtual tour of YouTube for a whole host of live shows – mostly captured back in
Brazil on shaking camphones – and you can nix
the playback rumours (allegedly started by the
same Brazilian hacks who describe the band as
“Just a bunch of ridiculous girls” – quoted by
Adriano, who, as the token guy has twice as
much to be aggrieved about…) Live, CSS Roxxx
– and although some still seem endearingly
uncertain as to what to with all this attention,
you have to imagine it would take a truckload
of tranquilisers to slow Lovefoxxx’s awesome
repertoire of bedroom-honed dance moves –
there isn’t a line that doesn’t have its own hand
signal, a chorus that doesn’t have her wrapping
herself around a speaker, or rolling on her back
with glittering cowboy boots bicycling the air.
Adriano: “So when we started the band
Fotolog it was also viewed a lot – and this is
before we had recorded music. “
But you were playing shows?
Lovefoxxx: “There was a picture of her
birthday…” ‘Her’ being Ira, bass, who is mostly
quite serious and elegant, kind of iconiclooking.
“The second show was my birthday…”
(And the band her idea – not Adriano’s.)
And now Luiza (also with the guitars):
“There was a picture of – we used to have
a building where no one lives, so we could go
and play all night”
Ana: “That was very important.”
Luiza (enraptured): “For hours and hours…”
(Within 20 seconds of meeting, Luiza was
giving me a fairly detailed astrological analysis,
despite my best protests of cosmic agnosticism).
Lovefoxxx continues: “At the fourth
rehearsal we had four songs…”
Adriano: “…and I said, OK, let’s record
something, because everybody is seeing
the band and starting to say bad things –
‘cause they could see the image but they’d
never heard…”
Ira: “Even when we had music on the
internet, we didn’t have an album – journalists
would come to us and only ask us about
clothes, nightlife…”
Luiza: “‘…’Why do you comb yr hair
like this’…?”
From there? Sub Pop. From there? Here.
fuck off is not the only thing you have
to show
Electroclash did a lot of things very well. Human
emotion wasn’t often one of them. This song
sees keyboards shiver in slow-motion and
guitars burn like a heat rash as Lovefoxxx
refuses to let this song’s propulsive sadness
get to her, locks her voice to rhythm track
and keeps going.
It’s that amazing thing that really clever pop
does better than almost anything else – rather
than dragging its audience into the suffocating
depths of the self-advertising creator, it chimes
an everyday mood, an emotion isolated from
the tiresome specifics of somebody else’s
autobiography – a very small, human moment
in the middle of this beautifully synchronised,
kaleidoscopically-unfolding machine.
You’re not what people might consider to be
a Sub Pop band…
Luiza laughs: “Who is? The Postal Service?”
Point taken.
Ana: “Deep down we’re a rock band – if
you go to a show, you can dance to it, but it’s
a rock show.”
Caro: “It’s much more like at the beginning
of Sub Pop.”
I ask for tips on how bands can get noticed
on the internet (I’m thinking: this will make
a neat sidebar). Ana scuppers my dream:
“We really didn’t do anything…We’re not
really experts…”
“You have to have fun. Don’t be
pretentious,” commands Luiza.
Adriano: “If you start a band planning to get
money and fame [everyone is laughing and
shaking their heads >, you’d better get a job…”
Luiza summarises thus: “Make a song. Put
the song on the internet. Small plans.”
alala
Feedback and bass bumps, a rhythm like
a synthesiser with a tickly cough and a lyric
requesting ever sillier wishes, from membership
of ‘that crazy band’ (guess who) to Brazilian DJ
duo MeuKu (which, of course, just happens to
consist of Ana and Luiza). “You’re so cool,”
deadpans Lovefoxxx, “Can I be your friend?”
There is a persistent perception of the
band – drawn entirely from their admittedly
masterful performances for camera lenses – as
ice cool fashionistas. But go from still to video,
and their playfulness is inescapable: Caro and
Ira might try to play it straight, but more often
than not break into self-conscious smiles and
averted eyes for their close-up.
I planned on asking them lots of questions
about São Paulo, their hometown megalopolis
of high-rise skyscrapers and the biggest bus
fleet in the world, until I saw an earlier
interview where they stressed that they saw
the internet more as their natural habitat.
Then, I asked them anyway.
I mean, come on – it’s the biggest city in the southern hemisphere. It encompasses
both shanty towns creeping out the edge of
the suburbs, and super-rich who commute
by helicopter to avoid the round-the-clock
gridlock of the teeming streets below. Luiza
sighs: “I love São Paulo, but taking a bus there
is like getting depressed…”
And it may be a city of 11 million, but Ana
says, “We don’t have a huge scene that we
come from – good nightclubs, and something
to do every day of the week, but of course you
get tired of it, because we go out a lot…”
“It’s always the same!” chorus Luiza and
Lovefoxxx.
It’s a big place, I say, remembering the
sprawling jpegs I’d scanned the night before.
Adriano: “Yeah – but the same people…”
Luiza: “You have parties every night…”
Adriano: “In the same places.”
Luiza: “With the same people.”
Are you bigger outside of Brazil now than
inside? “For sure,” nods Adriano. Meanwhile,
despite a huge on-to-offline following of fans
who mob every show, despite their paying dues
by playing alongside legendary São Paulo post
punk group As Mercenarias, and despite their
growing fame abroad, the Brazilian press still
don’t get it. Alongside patronising attitudes to
female musicians, the mixture of electronic and
rock elements are mistrusted, and as for their
association with Diplo – who, Caro notes, “Put
funk carioca on the world scene…”
“It’s because he’s American, and rich –
in their heads, ‘This gringo comes here and
steals our music’,” groans Adriano, shaking
his head. “If music had a nationality, it would
be the same: we’re Brazilians doing rock’n’roll
– he’s American and he’s doing funk carioca…”
Luiza: “People get very protective of
their culture.”
“…and jealous,” Adriano mutters.
“But we love São Paulo,” interjects Ira,
carefully, triggering a five-minute monologue
from Luiza on the unmatched excellence of the
city’s restaurants.
Ana: “Outside of São Paulo, Brazil is almost
another country.”
“We don’t have the heritage that Rio has
– bossa nova, carnival…” adds Ira. (Rio is also
the primary home of funk carioca – and
although Os Mutantes were likewise Paulistas,
tropicália as a whole was ‘more Brazilian’.)
Adriano: “São Paulo doesn’t have
a beautiful beach, doesn’t have a beautiful
mountain…”
“People in São Paulo relate more to the
Beatles than traditional music. We all listen a
lot more to foreign bands…” summarises Luiza.
music is my hot, hot sex
Happy songs are the hardest to write, and
one as perfectly autistic and self-absorbed
as this is guaranteed to be on repeat play
on iPods everywhere, its tempo beat-matched
to walking pace, a converse rubber sole
bounce. (Every band member plus their
manager bought a different colour pair in
New York.)
The song advances couplet-by-couplet,
and there’s something so innocent, so unforced
about it – from “Music is my dead end/Music
is my imaginary friend” to “Music is my
backrub/My music is where I’d like you to
touch…” OK – scratch innocent. Let’s say…
non-ironic.
They still run their own website, do their own
artwork, manage their own MySpace (except
Caro, who doesn’t have an account – “She’s
the outsider!” exclaims Ana as Caro see-saws
on a puzzled smile:
“I don’t know what to do in MySpace.
I don’t know what it’s for…” (A pause.) “What
is it for?”
It’s for viral marketing. It’s a means of massproducing
street teams. It’s a way to waste
hours that add up to days dipping into the
shallows of people you will never meet,
approving or denying the legions of bands
who queue for your approval like docile house
pets. It’s a self-selecting demographics testing
range for corporate research.
It’s also for escaping where you are.It’s for reaching out to all your friends at once,
keeping hold of them wherever your life
careers, however atomised and isolated we
become in ever-accelerating streets and cities.
It’s for advertising who you want to be. And
for most people, that’s as far as it goes, an
interactive, multi-media tombstone updated
daily. But for some, like CSS – who look just like
their pictures, but act like flash animations – it’s
a shop window; it’s a lottery ticket.
At the end of the interview, as they’re
stretching and we’re losing light – another
journalist primed to continue the polite
torment the moment I vacate my seat – I ask
about how Brazil’s famous, widely exported
telenovelas are standing up to reality TV (reality
TV is winning). I tell them that I think they’ve
got something in common – this band who’ve
let anyone with dial-up behind the scenes from
the beginning, who bypassed the media and
the A&Rs to play sell-out shows across the
country (promoted online), selling CDs to
fans who have every track in advance.
And there’s a reason this happened to CSS.
It’s in the songs. The fantasy hook-up with
that one-click icon of postmodern decadence
(‘Meeting Paris Hilton’), the love song (‘Patins’)
where the protagonists are unable to, uh,
‘interface’ until 30 seconds from the final
note, when it suddenly lurches into a list of
thumbnails that reads like a Flickr account
set to private. From long-distance love
experienced mostly through file-sharing
(‘Let’s Make Love And Listen To Death From
Above’) to the axe mêlée media satire of
‘Artbitch’, “What I do is called art shit and
don’t you dare make fun of me/Cuz everything
I do was featured on the pages of i-D…”),
CSS are writing about now, wherever.
Wish you were here?
It’s in the music. Pop that’s not too precious
to get its sweat on, that knows more dirty
words than you, that’s smart enough to let
you feel superior. And it’s what happens
when people (here and there) want to know
about more than where they are, the mutual
exotica of Brazil seen from the UK, or the
UK from Brazil. It’s when the vast spaces
between us can be folded up in an instant,
when five girls and one guy from South
America can make it here before their own
local press has figured it out. It’s not where
you’re from, it’s where you can be – and music
can be everywhere: from online demos to car
radios, discos to rock shows (live and online),
the article that strains to approximate the
sound to the once-heard melody that rewires
your head.
From a lame London theme pub: “Music is
my beach house.” The words you memorise:
“Music is my hometown.” |
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