(Sub Pop/Stomp)

Săo Paulo’s favourite daughters (and son) throw their fans a curve-ball

The chorus of Jager Yoga, the opening track of Brazilian pop sensation CSS’s sophomore album, Donkey, boasts that “We didn’t come into this world to walk around / We came here to take you out.” Of course, they have every right to be proud after a triumphant world tour, landing an iPod ad, and a ton of sales. The question is, though, does Donkey deliver the goods as promised? It’s certainly sufficiently different from Cansei De Ser Sexy: while their début displayed charmingly rough songwriting married with clean electro production, Donkey goes in the opposite direction, with Adriano Cintra writing proper, more structured pop songs and roughing up the production with layers of guitar feedback and noise. This means that there are no sure-fire underground hits like Let’s Make Love & Listen To Death From Above on Donkey (the nearest thing to this formula is Let’s Reggae All Night), but this short-term sacrifice will hopefully help the band in the long term. While Cansei De Ser Sexy feels in retrospect like a collection of gimmicky songs glued together with filler, Donkey sounds like an actual album, which means that any one track will not do justice to the whole – although lead single Rat Is Dead (Rage) does a good job of conveying the group’s new sound. The cohesion is impressive, but the real test for Donkey – and the group’s longevity – will be whether CSS’s fans will give this more challenging and less catchy album the hearing it deserves.

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CHAD PARKHILL

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