Talk To La Bomb

Performer: Brazilian Girls
Engineer: Mark Plati; Tchad Blake; Rich Costey
Producer: Brazilian Girls; Mark Plati; Ric Ocasek
Distributor: Universal Distribution

Notes: Brazilian Girls: Sabina Sciubba (vocals); Didi Gutman (keyboards, background vocals); Jesse Murphy (bass guitar, background vocals); Aaron Johnston (drums, background vocals). TALK TO LA BOMB provides more of the breezy, postmodern international pop introduced on the Brazilian Girls' self-titled debut. Mixing in dance grooves, lounge, dub, Latin flavors, downtempo, jazz, trip-hop, and rock, the Brazilian Girls offer up a fizzy concoction that balances an organic live sound with electronica flourishes. Lead chanteuse Sabina Sciubba sings in five different languages, positioning the Brazilian Girls as the house band for the new global village. While not as startlingly fresh as their first disc, TALK TO LA BOMB finds this eclectic New York City-based combo in a pleasurable holding pattern. With their lead singer sensually delivering her witty lyrics in five different languages while the band skillfully flirts with house, dub, and plenty of other cosmopolitan genres of music in the background, the Brazilian Girls' Talk to La Bomb revisits nearly all the elements that made their 2005 self-titled debut such a thrill, but the songwriting has slipped a bit, welcoming the beloved act to the sophomore slump. With great ideas hidden deep inside wandering tracks and more loose numbers than it should have, Talk to La Bomb feels a lot like the B-sides and remixes collections plenty of other bands follow a killer debut with, which means fans will get something substantial out of it but they won't be able to convert their friends. There's still some solid reason to cheer for the band with the Ric Ocasek-produced "Last Call" being a delicious kind of comfortable pop-house, while "Sweatshop" offers a winning combination of sexuality and Stereolab. The tribal "Tourist Trap" gets reckless in the tropics with its fun tale of "lighting up at the pool/peeing into the ocean" and the closing "Problem" is the Vogue magazine/punk rocker the Girls always seemed to have in them, but tracks like "Sexy Asshole" and "Never Met a German" are forgettable and feel like they were written because somebody dropped a clever song name. Talk to La Bomb indulges every whim you'd expect on an odds-and-sods compilation, so pretend it is and adjust your expectations accordingly. ~ David Jeffries

Rolling Stone (p.107) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "[T]he good stuff seduces like classic Stereolab....Even the breeziest cut, 'All About Us,' carries a haunting little melody." Spin (p.95) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[They make] multicultural, compositional, intellectual dance music: Ibiza meets punk, dub goes tango, trance gets smart." Entertainment Weekly (p.81) - "[With a] dizzy mix of bossa nova, jazz, rock, and electro beats. It's all shaped to the whims of slinky lead singer Sabrina Sciubba." -- Grade: B Uncut (p.97) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[A] playful album bursting with smart ideas and mongrel styles, from Bjorkish disco-rock to scrambled jazz-punk."

The New York City night club Nublu has been the match-making source for many a cool downtown jazz/electronica/pop ensemble, and the Brazilian Girls are a shining example. The quartet (no actual Brazilians, but one real girl, Italian-born vocalist Sabina Sciubba) met and started playing at the club regularly in 2003 for ecstatic audiences who loved their global groove-oriented sound, multilingual lyrics, and Sciubba's brainy sex appeal. Their 2005 debut on Verve topped the yearly best-of lists of a diverse range of critics, and the band also delivered one of the first music videos to be sold on iTunes.

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