Tired of Being sexy

There's a band from Brazil. Their name is CSS, which is short for Cansei de der Sexy in Portuguese. If you can't piece together what this means in English, then there's nothing more I can do for you, I'm sorry. This is supposedly a phrase Beyoncé muttered (in english of course) at some point in reference to herself. Sounds about right. Anyways, CSS thought it made for a great band name...and so it does.

CSS has gained a bit of attention recently, due in no small part to this little ad for a certain company's overpriced music gizmo. The sad truth is that I didn't even realize they were in a commercial until someone pointed it out to me. I stumbled across the band a few months ago on Pandora, which is the only thing keeping me sane at my dreary office job, but I digress. Their first album has been out since '06, and I am sad I didn't stumble across them sooner because they are amazing.

When I first sat down to write this post, I wanted to get a little more background on the band....but honestly there's not a lot you need to know. The group started as a loose collective of friends, and did shows in their native land, and became a hit on certain music sharing sites. Eventually they signed to subpop records and made their first (and to date only) album, which is self-titled. "Music is my hot hot sex," the song playing in the aforementioned ad, is the highest charting single out of South America in the history of Billboard, clocking in at #63 in the top 100 in 2007. Not too shabby.

As to the band's sound...they're pseudo-pretentious. I know that sounds wierd, but the more I think about it, the more that description fits. Keep the songs but strip the lyrics and replace them with more artsy, haughty ones and they would be pretentious. Thankfully they don't do that (although I'd probably still like them anyway). Think Ladytron, but infused with some spunky punk energy. They also kind of remind me of Robots in Diguise only, you know, less British and more Brazilian. Yes, I used the word "spunky"...but it needed to be done because they are, and they need to make another album, damnit. I hunger.

A Revelation

Take heed, (imagined) loyal followers, for I have news of note. Well, news in that it's news to me. I recently aquired a worthy album by a band known as Universal Hall Pass titled "Mercury." It's an excellent album, skipping and hopping between genres so often, I'm quite sure that's the reason All-music hasn't bothered reviewing it properly, even though it's been out since 2004 (lazy bastards). I'm trying to think of an accurate way to describe UHP's sound, and the closest I can come is a voice that sounds very reminiscent of Beth Gibbons(only more peppy and cheerful), sometimes more like a soft Regina Spektor, and occasionally just a hint of Björk. Don't let the styles of those compaired artists mislead you though, as the sound of UHP jumps the gambit from tracks with trip-hop and drum n' bass elements("Dragonfly") to laid back crooning("No one") to Alanis Morisette-like alt rock ("Special Agent").


The creative power behind UHP is a bright lady by the name of Melissa Kaplan. The name rang a distant bell for me...and rightly so, as I've discovered she's contributed to dozens of movie and game soundtracks. I became intrigued by her sound and decided to do a little more digging into her past musical forays, only to discover another amazing band she fronted by the name of Splashdown. Well, ex-band, I should say, as tragically, Splashdown is no more. Even more tragically, their albums and EP's are very rare indeed--the only copy of their first album , "Stars and Garters," that I could find is selling for $70 on Amazon. Yikes. Fortunately, for those of you who care only about the music itself, you can find a complete catalogue of the band's work available for free legal download here ,and this includes a complete album that was never released because of squabbles with their then-label Capitol Records (those swine!). You can read up on the full history of the band on that site, so i won't go into it here...needless to say, they were an amazing band with a lot of promise that got the shaft from a big record label. Shock and alarm, right? Man, what a rare and terrible occurence.

I'm getting off track here--the point is, you should check out this lady and if you like her stuff, buy it and support her cause, for indeed her music is worthy of praise and money. And cake.