CANSEI DE SER SAVVY!!!
[Video][Website]
[5.75]
Anthony Easton: The squelchy beats, the solid beat, and how the vocals work a kind of bored desire all seem rave by numbers, and the lyrics are terrible , but a hint of horn, and the perfect detail in the line “I don’t want to be your sour cherry” make the feel-good vibes feel less terrible.
[4]
Patrick St. Michel: Starts off as an out-of-step stumbler, a couple good ideas failing to click together. Then those horn stabs enter the picture and everything starts to make a little more sense. Yet that’s really the only neat sound here, CSS shaking off the ugly start and making something tolerable, but not much more.
[5]
Alfred Soto: Like IconoPop and Santigold, CSS take advantage of the commercial possibilities of what I’ll call discreet exotica: the sounds of many lands mediated by electronics. But the performers should hone these influences. CSS have a lyrical tag and a blank at the center.
[5]
Brad Shoup: So Adriano Cintra quit and took a bunch of instruments with him. Since no one ever picked up a CSS record for the guitar tone, this hasn’t seemed to appreciably affect the survivors. Not so much sun-splashed as backseat-melted, “Hangover” practically gives off fumes. The brass celebrates, Wayne Coyne-style effects bubble and pop, and Lovefoxxx remains an anti-singer in the Bow Wow Wow/Girls At Our Best! tradition. Allegedly a joke band, they seem to’ve shed their cornier trappings, “sour cherry” line aside.
[7]
Scott Mildenhall: The way this gently buzzes brings to mind a livelier “Sleng Teng,” and one that’s joyously twisted: the sound of losing the plot and dancing onwards. They don’t love you any more? Sing some lines about going through the gates of Hell with them, they’ll soon change their mind! Just as long as you keep to the conditions of your restraining order, it’s fine.
[7]
Will Adams: Just like a real hangover: mushy and haphazard, annoyingly persistent, and lasting longer than necessary.
[4]
Edward Okulicz: “Hangover” contains both the indolence that leads to, and results from, a good hangover. It’s loose and slack and charming. I like how the boozy electro-pop that they made their name in has gained a slight tropical feel to it; it has the smell of cocktails all over it.
[7]
Daisy Le Merrer: CSS feels like a band who really should have broken up by now. I mean, back in 2006 when we were all fawning over “Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death From Above,” I would never have bet on them lasting this long. I mean, a singer going by the name ‘Lovefoxxx’ seems destined for a solo career, right? Yet here we are, ten years after CSS formed, and they’re now making really sweet love songs, incorporating Brazilian elements in their music. They may still be the most inconsistent of bands, but their sloppy songwriting tendencies now read less as the result of too much hard partying and more as the relaxed atmosphere of old friends fooling around. I can’t say I’m unhappy with how things turned out.
[7]