After a stupidly fun shindig, everyone dreads the impending morning after. Waking up fully clothed, in a soggy mess of shot glasses, bottle caps and small change is agonising; and the blurry realisation that you fought with a best friend, vomited and passed out all within half an hour only adds to the headache. Donkey, the second album from the Brazilian party juggernaut CSS, is reminiscent of this calibre of hangover.
Three years after their underrated debut Cansei De Ser Sexy, Lovefoxxx and her art-prog bandmates have polished their sound so profusely it’s become, well, boring. Since the unexpected departure of bassist Iracema Trevisan, and the tumultuous relationship with their now ex-manager (and Trevisan’s then-partner), CSS tirelessly toured the globe, leaping around in fluoro, catsuits and glitter, and winning hearts for their refreshing, raw sound. The out-of-tune guitars, potty-mouthed Pidgin English (“lick my art tit!”) and cutesy kitsch party anthems have now been ditched in favour for guitar-based generic pop tunes. Instead of being inadvertently irreverent, like the debut, Donkey tries so hard to be blasé and fun that it grates on the nerves.
Opener Jager Yoga, a thumping dedication to daytime drinking, and the sexy Let’s Reggae All Night are about as close to the CSS who were catapulted to uber-popularity for extolling music as their ‘hot hot sex’ on the Apple iPod ads. What really lets the album down are the terrible rhyming couplets on songs such as Left Behind; “Gonna have some fun there and drink till I pass out/Gonna jump up on the tables and dance my ass off till I die”. The watered-down carelessness of these lyrics is only matched by the non-event that is the accompanying riff.
Rat Is Dead (Rage) wastes an excellent Pixies-tribute riff (complete with static) with a lame ode to domestic violence or inter-band rivalry or whatever. Fun Give Up and Beautiful Song are sadly lost in between the crud that was Left Behind and the failed metaphorical innuendo on I Fly. Move is a respectable nod to the ‘90s with boy/girl call-and-answer echoes, whereas Believe Achieve sees Lovefoxxx revert to her formulaic staccato delivery of half-sung half-spoken lyrics; an oasis in between a mish-mash of sub-par tunes.
If album closer Air Painter is anything to go by, perhaps the next CSS effort will see a boost in quality songwriting, instead of a pastiche careless attitude – something they didn’t need to try hard at on their debut. Overall, true to its name, Donkey is a disappointing sophomore outing by one of the more unclassifiable NME darlings of late. Sigh.
