Donkey
(Sub Pop)
1/2
In between CSS’s blog-baiting 2005 debut (reissued by Sub Pop in
2006), and this follow-up, the band released a pair of songs online: a
cover of L7’s “Pretend We’re Dead” and a modified version of
Sleater-Kinney’s “I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone” titled “I Wanna Be Your
J.Lo.” Beyond solidifying the Brazilian band’s love for Riot Grrrl’s
predecessors and descendants (and J.Lo), these songs, especially the
latter, signaled that some subtle changes were in store with
Donkey.
The band, whose biggest hits have been electro-pop numbers such as
“Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death from Above,” “Alala,” and “Music
Is My Hot, Hot Sex,” have largely let the drum machines and
synthesizers off the hook for their sophomore effort. Lovefoxxx might
still rather be your Jennifer Lopez than your Joey Ramone, but only
just barely. Instead, they’ve hired a session drummer; the effect is
that the beats are still grid-quantized precise, they just come from an
acoustic drum kit. The synths, meanwhile, are pushed to the fringes,
only really showing up to add emphasis to an occasional chorus.
Granted, the band have always been as much a guitar band, a rock
band if you must, as an electro band. But the guitars on Donkey are not only more dominant but also markedly different than those on
their debut. That album’s shambolic thrash has been replaced by sharp,
slightly dissonant stabs and tightly snaking melodies that recall
Sleater-Kinney perhaps more than any cover could.
The album has some gems—the moody, rocking lead single, “Rat
Is Dead (Rage),” which shifts between pogo beats from its bitter
titular emotion to a kind of fragile but defiant enthusiasm; the Dance
Song 2008 guitar hooks of “Give Up” and “Beautiful Song”; and the
wistful and melancholy “Air Painter.” Nothing has the same novel glee
as their debut, but then this album often seems set on greater
emotional variety.
Still, this kind of tense
dueling-guitar drama is better suited
to Sleater-Kinney’s charged third-wave anthems than it is to CSS’s
globe-trotting hipster laments (cities referenced on Donkey:
Baltimore, Amsterdam, Helsinki—must be a bummer). Songs like the
bouncy and admittedly catchy “Jager Yoga,” with its hints of
existentialism quickly sidetracked into nightlife, and “Let’s Reggae
All Night” (thankfully not an actual attempt at reggae), as well the
album’s less striking numbers, reaffirm CSS as a pretty, vacant party
band. The great thing about SK, of course, is that they had words and
guitar.