Let's talk about sexy

Let’s get the party started. An art-pop vision in extremis, Cansei de Ser Sexy may soon be your new favourite band. Musically, the Sao Paulo sextet – five growling girlies packing beat-up guitars, plus one drummer/songwriter flaunting a sorry pornstar mustache – exist somewhere on the scary side of funk, salting their scuzz-bucket ditties with bonkers cheerleader cat-calls and dutty techno flourishes. Quite obviously, they’re the most exciting thing to roll out of the indie mothership in years.
“What if David Bowie comes to the show tonight?” ponders hairy sticksman Adriano Cintra, apropos of very little. Cintra is gazing out his hotel window, overlooking a roiling mid-town Manhattan where, in a few hours, Cansei de Ser Sexy – CSS to acquaintances – are due to play a sell out show. “I mean: David Bowie! I think I will freeze up on the stage. I would just sit there, not knowing what to do.”
“Cansei de Ser Sexy” is Portuguese for ‘tired of being sexy’ – the name comes from a spam email that arrived in Adriano’s inbox: “It was a quote from Beyonce. She said she was tired of being sexy. Which is such a silly thing, don’t you think? It’s like saying you are tired of being rich. Tired of being sexy – pah.”
When CSS struck upon their moniker, it was absurd to imagine they might ever actually meet Beyonce face to face. Grabbing the attention of taste-makers across the globe has, however, lately brought the band to the notice of the rock a-list – bumping into Beyonce is no longer beyond the wildest boundaries of probability.
“We’ve already been at a party with Noel Gallagher, in England,” says Adriano. “I didn’t go over and talk to him, though. I don’t like his band. What would I say? ‘Hi Noel, I think you’ve only written one good song in your career.’”
Starting out, CSS were less a band, more an excuse to invite a bunch of pals around to vocalist Lovefoxxx’s apartment and blare properly filthy techno until 4am. It was only when a CSS demo landed on the desk of Sub Pop Records that things turned serious. In July, the band dropped their gloriously freaky self-titled debut, an album that appears to simultaneously channel the spirit of Chicks on Speed, Beck, Talking Heads and Giorgio Moroder. Sell-out concerts and gushing write-ups have followed. Back home, meanwhile, CSS’ potty-mouthed groove-outs have soundtracked everything from cookery programmes to mid-afternoon chat shows.
“People tell us our lyrics are very sexual. I must say this did not really occur to us, because we are writing them in English,” says Adriano, asked how songs such as ‘Music Is My Hot Hot Sex’ fare on Brazil’s equivalent to Live At Three.
“Outside of Brazil maybe they think we’re like obsessed with sex or something. But nobody in Brazil thinks that. Every morning there is a show on the biggest channel, TV Globo, that is hosted by an old lady. She cooks and takes phone calls from the viewers. Well, our music is used on that show.”
Because he is the only male in the band, Adriano is often painted as the svengali genius behind CSS. He snorts at the idea: “If I was so talented, I wouldn’t be in a band. I’d be like David Bowie, a solo singer with millions of fans. Because it is the truth that everyone in the band is equally important. If Iracema [Trevisan, bassist] left, then we wouldn’t be the band we are. Everyone is essential.”
Trotting around the globe in the company of five women is, reports Cintra, mildly challenging, not least because it holds him to higher standards of personal hygiene than is usual for indie bands treading the toilet circuit. Not that he’s really complaining.
“I used to be in a band with a bunch of guys and it was terrible,” he recalls. “We drove around Brazil in a horrible little truck. Real long distances too, because Brazil is so huge. The smell was beyond describing. It was filthy. If you are in a band with a load of guys, people expect you will put up with terrible accommodation. When it is women, they make sure everybody gets a nice bed. So with CSS, we always have nice beds and clean rooms.”
Pop stars are usually obliged to sell five million records and spark a hip-hop feud before kidnappings at gun-point become a worry. In Brazil, however, it seems even lower-rung indie bands need to watch their backs.
“Once, two guys on a motorbike pulled up and shoved a pistol in my face and said I would be going with them,” recounts Adriano. “They rode to all of the ATM machines in the centre of the city. At each one, they made me get money out. This happened ten years ago. Back then, it wasn’t so unusual. Very many of my friends have been kidnapped. That’s Sao Paulo for you. We love the place but it can be very dangerous.”