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 That album's shambolic thrash has been replaced by sharp, slightly dissonant stabs and tightly snaking melodies that recall Sleater-Kinney perhaps more than any cover could.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.