Bringing Sexy Back

Luísa Hanae Matsushita – better known to the world as preternaturally slinky CSS front-woman Lovefoxxx – has some bad news. As part of the Brazilian band’s ambitious re-branding campaign she’s decided to knock on the head one of her most beloved trademarks. There’s no easy way of saying this fan-boys. Lovefoxxx is giving up on wearing cat-suits. We, like you, are weeping on the inside.

“At the start nobody wore cat-suits,” she says. “So I thought it was original. I’m a big fan of the way surfers look in their body suits. That’s what inspired me. Then people started making me cat-suits and before I knew it I was wearing them at every show. It was my ‘thing’. I have since noticed that a lot more people are wearing them. You go to a concert and you see all these cat-suits. So I have decided – no more.”
That’s not all which has changed in the CSS universe (the name, incidentally, is an acronym for Cansei de Ser Sexy – ‘tired of being sexy’ in Portuguese). Incredibly, it’s going on five years since the Sao Paolo band exploded on to the indie scene, with a grab-bag of primate rave beats, kinky guitars and potty-mouthed pidgin rap, delivered by Lovefoxxx in her irresistibly accented English. But the band found their early momentum impossible to maintain and their 2008 second album Donkey was a critical and commercial flop.
Retreating to Brazil, they’ve overhauled, updated and upholstered their sound in an effort to win back the taste-makers who flocked to them in the beginning. On stonking new record La Liberación, the grooves are shiny, the choruses vast and gleaming, Lovefoxxx’s delivery more polished than you’ve heard before. This is CSS 2.0 and frankly it’s the update you’ve been holding out for.
“We were just so tired when we made Donkey,” she sighs. “We were saying ‘yes’ to everything. The touring was endless. The lesson we learned was never make a record when you’re exhausted.”
Not that she was aware Donkey was such a tremendous flop when it came out. CSS’ touring schedule was so punishing they didn’t even realise that, by putting out a duff record, they’d flushed a lot of the goodwill they’d generated down the U-bend.
“When you’re in the middle of something, you don’t always see it for what it is,” says Lovefoxxx. “It was only afterwards that I discovered what people thought about Donkey. We never left the loop. I suppose it was a good way of learning.”
The first indication that things might not be well in the CSS camp surfaced in 2008 when bassist Iracema Carneiro announced she was leaving. At the time the official reason was that she worried the band’s heavy live schedule was leaving too huge a carbon footprint. However, the speculation was that near-constant touring – CSS were playing upwards of 200 gigs a year – had simply worn her out. Looking back, Lovefoxxx acknowledges it was upsetting to lose their bassist, but that reports of the group being plunged into crisis were greatly exaggerated.
“The media in Britain is really sensationalist,” she proffers. “They always seek out problems. They like to talk about these things, a lot. Whenever something bad happens they focus on that. That’s how it works. Everyone was excited just ‘cos it was bad news.”
A curious feature of the CSS story is that, even as their career went supernova in Europe, they couldn’t get arrested back in Brazil (in fact, their only brush with the law was when drummer/songwriter Adriano Cintra was kidnapped at an ATM machine several years ago). Though well-travelled by Brazilian standards, the speed with which their popularity took off overseas – and the punishing routine that followed – took some getting used to, says Lovefoxxx.
“I’d been to America a few times – Disneyland when I was nine, New York when I was 15. But never to Europe. Our first show was in Glasgow. I didn’t know what to expect. It was a shock to see so many people turning up to gigs. It was crazy.”
She’s glad to report things have changed. Though it will be a while before they get in to the Brazilian charts, nowadays the group has a firm following at home and can actually draw a crowd.
“We played recently and it was our first Brazilian club show since 2006. We were on stage for an hour and 45 minutes. Honestly, it felt like 40 minutes. So we want to put out our respect to our fans here. The problem is that Brazil is a difficult country to tour. The distances are huge, so it ends up very, very expensive. And outside of Sao Paolo people only want to see you at the weekend.”
If the making of Donkey was a collective struggle, then the process of recording La Liberación was a far more straightforward affair. Feeling the benefit of a year off, they group couldn’t wait to re-enter the studio.
“Compared to other writing cycles, it was really pleasant,” Lovefoxxx enthuses. “We were way more productive. We did 24 songs, of which we could only put 11 on the album. So we’ll have plenty of interesting B-sides. There were a lot of great pop songs we had to leave off. Overall, we wanted something that was energetic and cohesive, that had a youthful energy.”
The outstanding track is ‘Hits Me Like A Rock’, a duet between Lovefoxxx and Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie. Far from a random hook-up, it turns out the two groups go way back.
“In 2004 we performed at our first ever festival in San Paolo, which is where we met them. We started talking and years later we met again in England. After that we always seem to be on the same festival bills. They were always nice to us and I sang on one of their albums. So we thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to do something with Bobby’. It turned out that it was.”

La Liberación is out now.