Words by: Dimitri Kalagas
I have to admit, even before speaking to electro-punkers Cansei de Ser Sexy (Tired of Being Sexy, for those of us unfamiliar with Brazil’s native tongue of Portuguese) I had a soft spot for them. With their arty self assuredness, irresistibly ironic view of pop culture, a haphazard experimental attitude to making music and, the icing on the cake, the fact that they are five sassy gals and one lucky guy from Sao Paulo in Brazil, how could you not fall for CSS?
Yet another band to add to the steadily growing list of artists achieving fame through the Internet, CSS’s rise has been meteoric, garnering a huge following through downloads off the Brazilian site Trama Virtual, a Fotolog profile and now Myspace. So does their music match the hype? It would seem so, with a debut album stocked with tunes ranging from off kilter electro-punk to polished disco-pop, it’s hard to believe that the members of CSS came together with little or no experience in playing their instruments or song writing, an attribute that seems to have actually aided them in creating their unique blend of self aware cynicism and charming naivety. Currently touring North America with Diplo and his Mad Decent band of merry men Bonde Do Role, it seems that the future is bright for CSS, even if they are tired of being sexy.
Lifelounge’s Dimitri caught up with the self-professed worst bass player in the world Ira Trevisan to converse about pop culture, the Internet and whether or not Paris Hilton is a slut.
DK: So are you guys on tour at the moment?
IT: Actually we’re heading out on tour next week. I’m at my place in Brazil right now.
DK: Lucky you! So how did the band meet?
IT: We’ve been friends for a long time; we knew each other from parties and from work and things like that. One day we just decided to start a band, so we began rehearsing and made a few songs, which we played in small clubs. Then all of a sudden people here started liking us, and we were in the newspaper, so we started working on our album and here we are.
DK: I actually read that you guys met on the Internet via your photo blogs.
IT: It’s not exactly like that. We used to have Fotolog profiles. At that time there was a bit of a Brazilian invasion in Fotolog, we all had them, and we did speak through them, but it wasn’t exactly like people have said. We just used them to talk to each other and share photos and other things. We made the band Fotolog profile before we made music, that part is true. We took some pictures during rehearsal and then we thought, ‘Let’s make a Fotolog profile of the band,’ so we put the rehearsal pictures up, and people started talking about us, after that we made some music and put that on the Internet as well.
DK: You’ve had a huge response to your music on the Internet, particularly on Trama Virtual, how has the response been outside of the Internet, for example, in your hometown of Sao Paulo?
IT: Well, it’s funny, a lot of people know about us here in Brazil because of the Internet, so we have a really young audience, because a lot of young kids here spend a lot of their time online. But we’re not a major band here in Brazil; we don’t get any coverage on the radio or television. Our audience is more likely to go find the music that they like, rather than sit and wait for what the TV or radio is going to offer them.
DK: What do you think of the Myspace and Youtube phenomenon, do you feel that the Internet has played a significant part in your success as a band, particularly internationally?
IT: I think it has. We really like the Internet, we like to talk to our friends on it, and it’s so much easier to do it when you have this sort of tool to use. There are a lot of fans here in Brazil that come to our concerts and record them on their cameras and then post the video the next day on Youtube, so that response from the public is nice for us. Myspace is great as well, I usually just go around checking out what other people are listening to, and I’ve found a lot of great bands through Myspace. So I’m really glad when people find out about us through Myspace. It’s really democratic when you think about it, it’s not like we have a big label who is putting ads for us up everywhere, so I think the Internet is playing a huge part in making music better.
DK: I read that no one in the band actually knew how to play their instruments when you guys got together, how did you decide who did what, and how easy has it been to teach yourselves to not only play, but write songs as well?
IT: Well, we actually all did play a little bit, but not too much. I was lousy, the worst bass player ever. I didn’t know how to play, but I really wanted to play bass, so I learnt, and when the band started doing bigger concerts, I took classes. In the first place when we called each other to be part of the group, the main thing we thought of was who we wanted to hang out with in a band situation, like who would be fun to hang out with. With Adriano it’s quite weird, because he is the only one who has music training. He has always been in bands and played guitar for like 13 years. So we asked him, ‘what don’t you know how to play?’, and he said he’d never played drums, so we said ‘OK you’re going to play drums, is that OK with you’, and he was fine with that. I think that sort of attitude worked out great in the end, because we don’t have any preconceptions or any pressure to prove that we are really good musicians. We just do what we want to do with the instruments. It is about freedom, about playing the way we want to play.
DK: Do you feel that your lack of preconceptions about how music should be written, and how instruments should be played has given you a fresh approach to song writing?
IT: Yeah, that’s played a huge role for us. We gave an interview to an English reporter from the Observer, and he said to us, ‘I don’t know why, but I have the feeling that every band that comes from South America is always a different version of something else’. And this happens a lot. Here in Brazil we have a lot of bands that want to sound like the Rolling Stones, or want to sound like Radiohead, and they play a lot and learn how to play really nice guitars and everything, but this is really boring. It’s something that really annoyed us about the Brazilian underground scene. So we decided we just wanted to make music that was fun for us, music that we would like to dance to. So we had those criteria, and Adriano and Lovefoxxx would write the songs and come to us to put them together. We always think about playing the songs at a concert and whether we’ll have fun because we really just want to have fun doing our own music, without proving anything.
DK: There seems to be a sense of irony in your music, both stylistically and lyrically. Is that cynical view of pop culture intentional?
IT: We kind of like pop culture. Ana, one of the guitar players, knows everything about all the celebrities, all the gossip. We like to talk about that sort of stuff, because it’s kind of fun to talk about those people, it’s really surreal sometimes and we think it’s funny. We love a lot of shitty pop music as well, like Mariah Carey. We think her music is great. I don’t think it’s cynical, because we actually really like it, it’s not like we think that Paris Hilton is a slut, she’s funny, and it’s fun to talk about her.
DK: Your music doesn’t really have any geographical references in it; it doesn’t sound like South American music. Has living in Brazil had an impact on your sound and where do you take your influences from?
IT: Well, we try to sound universal, but we like Brazilian music. I think there’s a tendency in Brazilian culture to listening to a lot of music that the rest of the world does. We really care about music that comes from the rest of the world, especially from the United States or Europe or wherever. It’s really sad sometimes because people are focused on foreign music and forget about Brazilian music.
DK: How exposed to popular culture are you in Sao Paulo, do the fashion and art scenes there resemble those in Europe and North America?
IT: We have a lot of exposure, but mainly through the Internet. It all comes back to the Internet! Everything is really global these days, I have cable television, so I end up seeing the same shows that my family living in Europe sees, and we really go after the things that we like, we’re not lazy about it, if we want something we go for it.
DK: So do you guys have any plans to tour to Australia in the near future?
IT: Yeah, we’d love to go to Australia, you can’t imagine how much! Sub Pop really wants us to go there because we’re getting a great response from Australia; we’re receiving a lot of emails from people. We’re trying to arrange a show, maybe on New Year’s Eve, or something like that.
Cansei de Ser Sexy’s eponymous debut album is out now through Sub Pop and Stomp.
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