Idolator: CSS

CSS Are Apparently Tired Of Being Any Fun To Listen To

Maura Johnston — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:30:00 EDT

ARTIST: CSS
TITLE: Donkey
RELEASE DATE: July 22, 2008
WEB DEBUT: July 1, 2008

ONE-LISTEN VERDICT: "Oh my God, I'm so messed up," CSS lead singer Lovefoxxx blurts out on the third lyric of the second album by the Brazilian dance-punk outfit she leads. It wouldn't be worth pointing out as a lyric if it didn't color the entirety of Donkey, which sounds like the soundtrack to a scenester party attended solely by people who went from being penniless bomb-throwers to self-satisfied rulers way too fast, and didn't realize that the indulgences (drinking, drugging, taking cell phone self-portraits, self-promoting) they'd become addicted to in the process made them everything they'd once poked fun at. The songs sound like rejected She Wants Revenge album filler that have been subsequently stuffed with their own filler, and one wonders why such a "fun" band has decided to become so, well, turgid.

There are some moments that break through—"Beautiful Song," in particular, departs enough from the relentlessly grinding 4/4 beat that supplies Donkey's backbone to stand out, and it actually has a bubbling synth part—but it's hard not to feel that Donkey works better as a cautionary tale than as something to press "play" on. Take heed, CSS fans: This is what happens when you get so stuck in "party" mode, with its flashbulbs and vomit-stained floors and indiscreet bumps and chances to meet Paris Hilton, that you're completely oblivious to how everyone around you is having a positively shit time.

UPDATE: Apparently the leak is one of those "let's make love and loop 30 seconds of each song endlessly" fake-outs, but I stand by this assessment, which was based off a promo CD that I got in the mail yesterday. (I have the IM logs to prove it, too.)

Monolith Festival Seemingly Comfortable With Indie-Intensive Lineup

Anthony Miccio — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:30:00 EDT

A festival with Justice and Devotchka as the headliners? Where's the Jay-Z or Joe Jackson? Where's the Weiland? The ironically named Monolith Festival, which will hit Red Rocks Ampitheater on Sept. 13 and 14, is keeping the scale kind of small, but kind of awesome as well. TV On The Radio, CSS, Del The Funkee Homosapien, and bands with even less name recognition may not pull in the suburbanites, but it should make for an enjoyable show. Lineup after the jump.

(in alphabetical order)
Airbourne Toxic Event
Akron/Family
Mickey Avalon
The Avett Brothers
Band Of Horses
Blitzen Trapper
Bright Channel
The Bronx
Neko Case
CSS
The Cribs
Cut Copy
Darker Love
Del The Funkee Homosapien
Devotchka
The Elms
Fratellis
Chester French
The Giraffes
Grampall Jookbox
Hearts Of Palm
The Heavy
Holy Fuck
Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings
Justice
The Kills
Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip
Cameron McGill & What Army
The Morning Benders
The Night Marchers
The Photo Atlas
A Place To Bury Strangers
Pop Levi
The Presets
Rosewood Thieves
Silversun Pickups
Superdrag
Tilly And The Wall
The Ting Tings
Tokyo Police Club
TV On The Radio
Upper Terrace Stage
Vampire Weekend
John Vanderslice
White Denim

There are still some TBAs peppered throughout the schedule, but if I was the kind of person who would fly to Colorado to see a concert, I'd already be hitting this. At the very least I'd want to catch The Night Marchers, which is the new band of John Reis of Rocket The Crypt and Hot Snakes. Get psyched!

Monolith Festival
The Night Marchers - I Wanna Deatbeat You [Youtube]

CSS' Creative Path Is Littered With The Corpses Of Bygone Alt-Rock Stars

Maura Johnston — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 10:30:00 EDT

Those of you who lived through the '90s, when "alternative music" broke and was subsequently broken, may remember the unfortunate cycle endured by a few bands who stormed out of the gate with a strong first single: The song would be inescapable, the album would be mostly decent, and the follow-up would sound like the band in question had all of its edges shaved off by producers, executives, and self-made delusions Apparently the Brazilian glam-punk band CSS, known by many as "that band from the iPod Touch ad" but who I hold near and dear to my ears because of the still-infectious "Alala," is now in stage three of that evolution.

The band's new single "Rat Is Dead (Rage)" strips the band's swagger and replaces it with a Q101-ready stomp; there's a sparky guitar riff buried way down there, but it's underneath so much alt-by-numbers production that finding it almost seems like a worthless cause. A note to CSS: Maybe you should try and find Bob Rock between now and June, so he can at least help you slap together a "Volcano Girls" before you ship Donkey out to stores? [CSS]

CSS bassist Ira Trevisan has left the infectious ...

Anthony Miccio — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 16:00:59 EDT

CSS bassist Ira Trevisan has left the infectious Brazillian dance-pop group. "I decided to move forward and dedicate more of my time to fashion and other projects. Just a big change of priorities, as I will never stop playing music. I am also a bit worried about climate change. People should care more and do something about it. I decided to fly less. CSS will always be in my heart. They said goodbye to their bass player, but they won a new life time fan. In health and sickness, in happiness and so forth. Blah blah blah, so help us God. " The band's drummer, Adriano, will now play bass, with a session drummer filling in for live performances. Also, the "Blah blah blah" part is a direct quote. [CSS' MySpace Blog]

CSS Inadvertently Implicated In Gaming Of YouTube Charts

Maura Johnston — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 17:40:24 EST

The above clip for Cansei de Ser Sexy's "Music Is My Hot, Hot Sex" isn't an official clip by the Brazilian glitch outfit—it was made by an Italian music blogger who decided to take some viral-video contest footage and set it to the song that was made middlingly famous by an iPod Touch ad a few months back. Somehow, the clip has become the most-watched video in the history of YouTube, racking up 89,750,739 views and overtaking the (really stupid) "Evolution Of Dance" for the top spot. Lest you think that this success is a testament to the power of Apple's music placement, Andy Baio at waxy.org is here to let you know: The clip may have actually cheated its way to the top. No, really. This is what the world has come to, everyone.

Baio decided to look at the ratio of views to comments on the video-sharing site's top 10 clips, and he found a surprising anomaly: "[The] CSS video has a very unusual 21,487-to-1 ratio. In other words, for every 21,487 views, someone leaves one rating. To compare, the average ratio for every other video in the top 10 is a more reasonable 590-to-1." The video's play count has grown exponentially over the past month, too; since February 25 it's racked up about 25 million pageviews. (To compare, YouTube's most popular video of the last week—the one of the Lufthansa plane bobbing from side to side—has only been played 1,662,543 times.) So it's not hard to wonder how likely it is that those views came not from people, but YouTube-hitting bots—even if the clip's title does have the always-popular search term "sex" smack in the middle.

Since this is an unofficial video, one can assume that if there was cheating going on, it wasn't at the behest of the band. I'm just hoping that it was some hacker who was just sick of getting sent "Evolution Of Dance" by every one of his extended family members—at least the motivation of kicking something that really isn't funny down the list would make this whole scam a little less silly. (But only a little.)

New Video Overtakes "Evolution Of Dance" For #1 Spot On YouTube [waxy.org]
CANSEI DE SER SEXY Music is My Hot Hot Sex [YouTube]

Listening Station: CSS Tries To Shoot Off Some Sparks

Brian Raftery — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 08:41:40 EST

Gorilla vs. Bear has a new track from CSS, the impeccably styled Brazilian dance-attack band that cranked out one of last year's best singles, "Let's Make Love and Listen to Death From Above." On this BBC radio-session excerpt, the group covers L7's Clinton-era classic "Pretend We're Dead," which is further proof that the '90s alt-rock revival is upon us; by next week, we fully expect to hear Amy Winehouse covering Elastica covering Wire.

~~CSS - Pretend We're Dead (BBC Session)~~ [MP3, link expired]