CD Review: The Brazilian Girls, "Talk to La Bomb"

4.5 Stars

Sexy Back? It never left.

When someone asks you if you like Brazilian Girls, they could be referring to the bikini sporting, Portuguese-speaking women of the large South American country, but it’s more likely that they are referring to the band that is raising the bar in “ultra-chill” music. Treading the thin line between innuendo and overt sexuality, the New York City band provides a 2 a.m. alternative to your usual slowjamz playlist.

Organized in 2003, Brazilian Girls is actually comprised of one woman and three men, none of them Brazilian. But despite being a domestic product, the sensual voice of leadsinger Sabina Sciubba effortlessly combines lines in French, Spanish, German, and English in a leisurely and unaffected style. Her voice floats above deep lounge beats in a way that seems to coax the dimmers on your lights to turn themselves down.

Their self-titled debut album, released in 2005, unveiled a new, unique sound that centered around ceaseless beats, catchy, allusive lyrics, and diverse musical traditions. With their sophomoric effort “Talk to La Bomb,” Brazilian Girls unroll another chic dose of electronic, lounge, jazz, and house in the same vein of sound popularized by Buddha Bar and their compilations.

What is impressive about Brazilian Girls and their songs is their ability to slide seamlessly between the different genres and languages. Where one moment you are pleasantly jerked around by immaculate dance bass, the next you are being sung a Spanish lullaby set to the most soothing electronic notes, or you feel as if you are sitting in a French club in the 1930s.

The album opens with a relentless, heavily distorted bass line in “Jique,” which carries the song to an eerie, heavenly bridge before descending once again into the dance-inspiring mire of bass. “Never Met a German,” a Bloc Party-esque rock track, has Sciubba fantasizing about being a general, telling the listener, “I almost have an orgasm when the tanks are rolling/ Crashing through the borders.”

This is a perfect up-tempo intro for the following track “Sweatshop,” which is quite possibly the epitome of chill. The song starts with a pristine beat and xylophone line and then enters a trance-like mood as Sciubba echoes in French over dreamy, subtle synth. At its halfway mark, it picks up pace with steady bass and sends the dreamy feeling of the song to a crescendo.

A later, equally addictive track, appropriately entitled “Nicotine,” inspires the feeling of blissful laziness. Leading with a quiet snare drum-roll followed by Sciubba’s languid lyrics that drift through the song like smoke, the song has the effect of an ocean shore or an open field.

Toward the album’s conclusion, the intensely strange “Sexy Asshole,” reminiscent of the Prodigy and sung nearly entirely in German, is a fitting bookend for this unique, weird, and nonchalantly sexual album that you and your petit(e) ami(e) will never be able to get out of your heads.

More than anything else, this album is a good time: it will make you dance, try to sing along in French, and do things your parents wouldn’t be proud of.