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Album reviews Music

CSS – Planta

CSS play the Opera House tonight (Thursday, July 4). See listing. Rating: NN


CSS are one of the last bands you might expect would still be around in 2013. Part of the fad-happy nu-rave scene of the mid-00s, the Brazilian dance-rockers shot to indie prominence by referencing of-the-moment pop culture (i.e. Let’s Make Love And Listen To Death From Above and Meeting Paris Hilton) and licensing their song Music Is My Hot Hot Sex to an iPod commercial. Years later, it all seems horribly dated. And to make matters worse, founding guitarist-producer Adriano Cintra left the band.

So for their fourth album, CSS went to a producer who’s used to drowning fledgling singers in layers of effects: TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek (the man responsible for Scarlett Johansson’s Tom Waits cover album). Sitek lends the band some nice slow-burning electronic atmosphere, but the songs lack hooks and sometimes shift into cringey faux-reggae. Into The Sun is an anthemic nugget of indie pop, but it’s one of too few highlights.

Top track: Into The Sun

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