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BRAZILIAN GIRLS
(Verve Forecast)
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With all the agility, and the cutes, of a kangaroo, this New York City quartet — none of whom is from Brazil and only one of whom is female — hop from genre to genre and continent to continent on their debut album. You may find yourself also wanting to hop a bit while listening to them, for these "girls" always maintain high danceability levels. Opening with the erotically charged "Homme," which drapes its classic French pop hooks in Serge Gainsbourg decadence, the album soon ventures into modern clubland with the pumped-up groove of "Don’t Stop," but breathy vocalist Sabina Sciubba hangs onto her air of elegant detachment regardless. "Corner Store" sets a tune straight out of a Weimar Republic–era cabaret to an electro-tango beat, then breaks into a jazzy scat-solo coda over crazily skittering drums. Sciubba sings in five different languages, and there’s some appealing humor on display in the English lyrics at least, most of them fragmentary observations like "When in hell did I become my mother?" ("Don’t Stop") and "Longer than your hair in the ’80s/Longer than ‘The Long Run’ " ("Long"). And yes, the chorus of the infectious nuevo-reggae number "Pussy" really is "Pussy pussy pussy marijuana."
