poppedmusic

La Liberacion

Released 22nd August 2011

CSS were one of the most hyped bands about in 2006 and then slowly seemed to disappear even with their last album. It was as if they came around at the opportune moment and then sadly didn’t quite manage to follow their amazing self titled début album with anything quite as exciting. Not to mention that everyone else form that “scene” had moved on or away and new fads have come and gone. Still their début remains one of my favourite albums of that decade and I do enjoy listening to Donkey whilst in the car. (It is actually my emergency car CD). Now we’ve all grown up a little and CSS have got past that difficult second album and have gone on to actually kick a little bit of ass with La Liberacion, their forthcoming 3rd album.

There is good and bad on this album and it’s a bit of an album of two distinct halves. In a way a part of me wishes they had not bothered with some of the tracks on the second half of the album (From La Liberacion onwards), as this part of the album really doesn’t feel as though it has been worked on as much as the first few songs. There is a bit of a musical mess on Partners In Crime. Love Foxx’s vocal style doesn’t quite fit and almost sounds flat and out of tune in parts. Even the music feels a little out of time in places, or at least in conjunction with some of the other instruments that are being played, though I do think this is possibly deliberate. I think this would have made for a really good instrumental. The piano part, especially in the middle and the end, is really good and I really like this new direction of sound, but it just doesn’t quite work and it’s such a shame. It’s the track that wobbles and errs over into the remainder of the album that feels a little on the poor side. It’s still growing on me in parts but Ruby Eyes and Rhythm To The Rebels are tracks that I don’t think will ever grow on me, they just feel like drunken jams recorded and left as they are. Then there’s Red Alert a song that has a really cool and sexy part but I want more of this and less of the rapping style vocal. It really has me torn because I love listening to those sexy parts and the music is great in this track, but that rapping! There’s also a few lyrics that don’t come across very well, not a fan of the asthma attack lyric, nor the “aka no mind games” which doesn’t make sense but that is possibly just a translation issue.

Despite my previous negative comments, La Liberacion starts quite strongly with the electro pop sound that is synonymous with CSS. I Love You has some quirky memorable lyrics and initially when I first listened to the album for the first time I was thinking ‘oooh this is going to be a great album if this track is what we’re going to go on.’ I think it would make for a great single and I can imagine dancing around to it late at night with a double vodka in hand. You know how it is right? Hits Me Like A Rock is really 80s sounding pop, absolutely everything about it screams it, the melody, the instrumentation and the male vocal parts too. If you thought we’d moved on from looking back at the 80s you were wrong, this is quite catchy and definitely enjoyable. La Liberacion is a great track and I don’t care what language it’s in, ok, so I understand it but regardless, it’s fun and you can tell that no matter what. It’s a real feel good song.

The album’s last track Fuck Everything sees the album end on a high. This has all the great CSS elements put together, a bit of a punk attitude and sound that makes you want to throw yourself around. It might even be one of the strongest tracks on the album, in fact it almost rescues it from those last few tracks that didn’t quite work out. The album itself actually ends in the most bizarre way. I don’t want to ruin the surprise but I really was left sat there thinking… “Right. WTF”. You won’t guess it in a million years. No matter how many times I hear it I just don’t want to hear it again. So all in all this is a bit of a mixed bag not just in terms of style but also in terms of styles that do and don’t work for them. It’s all good to experiment a little but maybe they need to go back to the CSS drawing board and have a rethink in parts for the next album.