CSS – short for Cansei de Ser Sexy, a translation of a ridiculous quote from Beyoncé stating that she was “tired of being sexy” – is currently touring for their brand spanking new fourth album, the delightfully eccentric and energetic Planta. Written and recorded in – and indeed inspired by – the city of Los Angeles, this record was produced by TV On The Radio’s Dave Sitek and features 11 gleaming songs about love, lust, sex, and “teenage tiger cats”.
This being their first album recorded outside their native Brazil, I ask Rezende if perhaps the tone of the album was affected by their new surroundings. “I think so!” she admits. “But we are Brazilian, and we filter everything through our Brazilian brains! But LA is a great place to get inspired. A lot of people go there to record stuff, and work with art in general, so yeah – I think it definitely had an impact.”
Also having an impact on their tone would be their usage of Sitek, who’s recently produced albums by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Foals, and Beady Eye. According to Rezende, the indie-rock guitarist and producer had been fortunate enough to watch CSS perform in London – and every piece of the puzzle fell into place from there.
“Yeah, [Sitek] saw the show and he liked it!” she says happily. “And he mentioned to his manager that he’d like to work with us. And when we finally got to LA, we were looking for someone to do the record; it was obvious that we should go to him! Because we love TV On The Radio – and I really love a lot of records he’s produced – and we were like, ‘Let’s just go meet him and see if it clicks’, and we just became like super-good friends instantly, and it became a really good relationship and friendship.
“We’d stay at his house!” she giggles. “And writing this record was like the easiest thing we’ve ever done, because it was just like holidays!”
Being in LA also afforded the Brazilian foursome the opportunity to come into contact with another unconventional rock chick, Hannah Blilie of disco-punk band The Gossip, who just happened by their studio whilst they were recording. Rezende recalls the experience fondly when asked about the nature of awesome collaborations. “She just came by while we were recording [our] song Dynamite, and it’s a very punk-rock song! And we were like, ‘Do you want to play on this?’ So that kind of thing is very cool! The best collaborations are the ones that happen completely by chance!”
Planta’s first single Hangover was co-written by Rancid’s Tim Armstrong and is a perfect exemplification of the anything-goes sound that CSS have been harnessing for the last decade. Exhibiting traces of pop, punk, reggae, dub and even mariachi, the work of CSS are all over the musical map. Rezende chuckles when asked how a song of theirs is born.
“The biggest thing, I think, is that we have a lot of freedom, and we never feel like we have to sit down and write,” she explains cheerfully. “We try to sit down to understand what we’re doing and how we are thinking, but we never think about, like, ‘Let’s do a record like this or like that’. It’s like, we just listen to an amazing reggaeton song, and we’re like, ‘Let’s do a reggaeton song!’ And then we try to do it, it doesn’t become a reggaeton song, it becomes whatever we do that we think is reggaeton!
“A lot of songs [in which] we’re thinking of something actually comes out differently than what we’d originally thought!” she says with a flourish. “We’re not really trained musicians and we don’t conceptualize the band, what style we are or whatever; and also the music we’re making gives us the freedom to play or write anything we want!”
CSS originally started out as something of a joke nearly a decade ago when these São Paulo art students thought it would be fun to wreak some musical havoc. Their 2006 self-titled debut, however, was anything but a joke, featuring the now-classic singles Music Is My Hot Hot Sex, Meeting Paris Hilton, and Let’s Make Love And Listen To Death From Above. Even today, this record retains its vitality and charm. From there, their sound has matured (they have, after all, learned how to play their instruments) … but their songs are as carefree, chaotic, and endearingly humorous as ever.
Rezende ponders for a moment when asked how she feels they’ve grown since their inception. “Oh, a lot!” she exclaims. “I think when we started we were like 20, 21-years-old; and now we’re all 30, 31! And I think [ten years] is a lot of time no matter what you’re doing. Also, it just becomes way easier to deal with whatever. Interaction becomes a really natural thing for us, so it’s like – it feels really nice, because it’s a ‘meant to be’ kind of thing!”
And that, in a Brazilian nutshell, is what is so special about CSS. They truly do feel as if they’re “meant to be”, and the music world is all the richer for it.
BY THOMAS BAILEY
