This record makes me feel better about the notion of being an adult. More on that in a second. First, Brazilian Girls, who are not actually Brazilian girls: They got their start in a club, and it shows: This stuff is all laid-back groove, with the usual transcontinental chic, easy-going house beats, and multilingual flourishes. But the club they came gliding out of is situated in downtown Manhattan, where the vibe these days is pretty far from VIP-lounge martini toasts. That fact goes a long way toward pegging what's special about them-- because no matter how much these immaculate grooves peek at glittery highlife, they're washed in such an earthy stoner vibe that they tend to wind up someplace else.
So one track sounds like something to bump on the way to the club, and the next is a sunny lazybones dub number with a chorus that runs "Pussy pussy pussy, marijuana." Suddenly you realize that this stuff would charm the dreadlocked southern boys at Bonnaroo as much as designer-chic folk and arty brown-skinned girls. Universality! That's how we come back to this adulthood thing. You can throw this band in with a lot of current acts, but the vibe they've wound up resurrecting might have more to do with the stuff adult sophisticates were chilling out to in the late 80s. What might sound like Zero 7 actually sounds more like Sade, and when this crew is really on the ball you get flashes of insight: So this is how cool Paul Simon used to sound to 30-year-olds.
If nothing else, they give us one unimpeachably great single, which in a long-gone sunny summer might have snuck up the charts like old-school Suzanne Vega. "Don't Stop" lets singer Sabina Sciubba work some slinky come-ons for a minute, the band combining live-groove keyboard feel with well-groomed beats. But when the chorus comes around, Sciubba starts skipping around her melody Simon-style, the band kicks it as sweet as a Phoenix single, and the whole thing blossoms into happy human basics: She just wants you to go to the park with her, maybe "drink some tea and smoke some herb."
And of course you would, because Sciubba is a total charm, with a deep warm voice and a knack for human-girl lyrics. Oddly enough, it's her come-ons and chants that falter: She's better off asking, "When and how did I become my mother," or going all Sade on "Long" and describing time as "longer than your hair in the 80s." The same goes for the music. The stoned horns and super-sunny island turns on "Pussy" do tourism as well as Simon ever did, while other tracks put a warmer spin on the kind of slick Euro spook we used to get from Goldfrapp. But Mediterranean bumps like the one on "Corner Store" try a little too hard, and the group's stabs at crowd-pleasing funk just don't shine on record like their laid-back pop does.
Which leaves some of this material falling short of its peaks. One of the perks of being adult, though, is that you stop getting worked up about albums that won't be everything you want them to. A handful of winners, some respectable grooves, and a live show that has Sciubba dropping that line about her mother from underneath a blindfold: I'm good with this. Next time I visit my mom, will someone remind me to copy her Sade albums?
