CSS, Romy @ Corner Hotel,Melbourne (29/01/2011)

Tue 1st Feb, 2011 in Gig Reviews

CSS take to the stage a full hour earlier than advertised, masquerading under the guise of a local electro band named Romy. Decidedly un-Brazilian looking, they awkwardly ply the audience for ‘interesting facts’ between watered down versions of their real songs and erroneously name-check Disney movies as points of reference, but that’s not even the worst part. A dress sense resembling something like an 80’s cover band enhances the awkwardness to a Napoleon Dynamite-esque magnitude and the 2 female singers inexplicably conspire to sabotage their own party pop anthems with eldritch, heavy metal shrieking. Yikes.

Gladly, or perhaps unfortunately given the level of performance, Romy decide against launching into the cover of Karma Chameleon that their appearance so readily deserves, but that may be the only thing they do right in a night of poorly contrived electro-punk misappropriation.

Happily, the queens of the genre aren’t slowing in making an appearance to the Corner Hotel stage to rectify any misstep in the proceedings and waste little time in validating a few preconceived notions. These include the super-gay demographic present (yes, from an oberservational perspective, not a derogatory one) and the presence of glitter, so much glitter, that permeates the display – bouncing off cymbals, thrown into the crowd, seemingly perspired by the band themselves. What does come as a mild surprise is the veracity of the live sound that the 6 piece create with early songs Off The Hook and I’ll Be Rude particularly taking on a more rocky, early-90’s persona and weirdly echoing some of the best efforts of L7 or The Donnas. Not that this is an unpleasant development; if anything, it probably unburdens the band’s detractors of some misplaced preconceptions, although it does leave the dancefloor somewhat immobile for the initial part of the gig.

Just before things begin to get weird, out pops the irrepressibly dancey Music Is My Hot Hot Sex to remind the world which band is in attendance. It steers the gig onto a more expected course with the South American love merchants breezing through their collection of ‘many summer jams’ and dubiously categorised ‘love songs’. Whatever they choose to label their creations, it’s hard not to be enthralled by a woman dubbing herself Love Foxx and demanding that spectators ‘Spoon!’ via the medium of her DIY T-shirt. The gig may as well be over after Let’s Make Love (and Listen to Death From Above) given the diverse landscape we’ve traversed to get to this point, and that songs breakdown moments which are hip-shakingly good on record but bounce-demandingly brilliant live. Luckily however, CSS have a lot more in the tank and shift gear to move into the somewhat mysteriously labelled ‘reggae portion’ of the gig.

There’s no reggae but it doesn’t really matter, there’s more than enough here of the band’s trademark retro-fashioned funky pop swagger to keep the ambiguously sexed fanbase dancing deep into the early hours of Big Day Out day.