Review: Brazilian Girls, New York City

Brazilian Girls are not from Brazil, only one of them is a girl, and their album New York City has very little to do with the Big Apple.

Brazilian Girls, New York CityBrazilian Girls are not from Brazil, only one of them is a girl, and their album New York City has very little to do with the Big Apple. Rather, it’s a soundtrack for the jet-set elite, a mixtape for an international cosmopolitan dance party to which we can only hope we’ve been invited. When multilingual vocalist Sabina Sciubba coyly asks on the opening track, “Do you like my accent?” it would be difficult to say no. New York City is another experiment in trendy globalism from a band who have built a reputation on writing diverse music for international pretty people. Sciubba frequently switches languages mid-verse and the band ostentatiously displays their musical proficiency and varied influences by shifting styles with reckless abandon. “Berlin,” a cheesy show tune-style march full of horns and cymbal crashes, touts the virtues of the titular German city in both French and English. The ’80s breakdown and jarring synths of “Losing Myself” make the Girls sound like a Depeche Mode tribute band, while the sweet folksy waltz of “L’Interprete” transforms Sciubba into one of the yé-yé girls of the ’60s. The album comes off as a whirlwind, attention-deficit musical world tour—completely shallow, but undeniably seductive. All this inane passport-flashing extravagance at times smacks of trust-fund-financed pretension, but the album is thankfully saved by the band’s playfulness. The laundry list of cities that serves as the lyrics to “Internacional” can’t possibly be entirely serious, and the band confirms this suspicion in “Good Times,” when they unapologetically admit, “We just want to have a good time!” And as far as good times are concerned, New York City is certainly a good place to start.

Score: 
 Label: Verge  Release Date: August 5, 2008  Buy: Amazon

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