CSS - Donkey (Sub Pop/Warner)

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Brazil’s CSS set out their stall for record two with this line from opening track, ‘Jåger Yoga‘: “We didn’t come into the world to walk around / We came here to take you out”.

Donkey is a harder, more aggressive and rockier album than their debut, and seemingly a spiteful response to their rise from the kooky rank - social outcasts in their own country who learnt about music by self-consciously not looking inwards to their own culture but outwards, via the Internet - to indie disco royalty.

They seem to be saying they’re still misunderstood, but in different ways now. A later track is called ‘How I Became Paranoid’.

Some of their initial character, however – borne of the pleasure of being imaginatively inept – is gone. Experience has led them to clean up their sound and dollop on the polish. A bad thing? Not in this instance.

Donkey kicks. It oozes with focus and confidence and it’ll send them into the pop cosmos, whether they can handle it or not.