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May 13, 2011 Web Exclusive By Michele Yamamoto Photography by Wendy Lynch Redfern

It’s early in Coachella’s final day when Brazilian outfit CSS walk over to the press tent, several minutes late and a tad dazed under the sun, on what is turning out to be the hottest of the three days.

This August, CSS will release its third album, La Liberación—its first in three years—and after a long recording and selection process, the band is more than ready to share. As we breach the topic, everyone chimes in eagerly. Multi-instrumentalist Adriano Cintra has a studio in Sao Paolo, where the band spent most of 2010.

“We’d just hang in there forever,” comments guitarist Ana Rezende, reflecting on the incubated recording process.

Cintra recalls, “We didn’t have an agenda. We just did pretty much like we did the first album.”

Frontwoman Lovefoxxx adds, “And also we had time to go back to the songs and change them and change them again and remake them.”

“I think that’s the cool thing that makes the records different,” says Rezende, “is that they reflect a lot of the year that we’re going through. And this is really reflective of the year that we were in Brazil after touring, and it was really nice…. We did a few shows, but mostly we didn’t do anything. And then in 2010, we just used the whole year to record.”

Though all the band members agree that the process was their most relaxed so far, their descriptions of the music suggest that the album will sound anything but. The mantra used in the recording studio was “Rip shit,” which the band feels was brought to fruition in the final product.

Lovefoxxx explains, “There’s a lot of raw energy in it, and some teenage feelings. Like very premature and just very free.” She also mentions that the album has a spirit of the 1979 film The Warriors. “Like when you find your crew, and then you feel very safe and empowered.”

“This is all about empowerment,” says Cintra.

The band agrees. In the year spent recording, CSS has had a chance to settle into its own skin and evaluate the road behind them. “Besides Adriano and Carol [Parra, guitar], this is our first band,” Lovefoxxx notes, “and we learned everything on the road, like life. And I think, this record, we put all our…knowledge in.”

As they have in the past (with tracks such as “Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death From Above” and “Meeting Paris Hilton”), the band still incorporates current cultural references. Allusions to such films as Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver and Dominique Deruderre’s Everybody’s Famous! find their places in the album, though in more hidden ways.

“There’s a lot actually,” says Rezende of La Liberación’s references, “but the thing is that we do it in a way that people don’t realize…. It’s weird. There’s Spanish guitars and stuff like that, that for us is a reference to ‘Lucky Manuelo.’ We do stuff in our head that’s really like that and then it’s not that.”

The album also features collaborations with Brooklyn’s electronic pop group Ratatat, Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie, Ssion, and David Bowie pianist Mike Garson. “We were blowing up,” says Cintra of the track with Garson. “Like, ‘Oh my God, it sounds just like Aladdin Sane.’”

Garson came to work with the band almost on a whim. As Cintra tells it, “I was like, ‘I really feel like this song…we need a piano, but we need Mike Garson playing it.’ And then our manager, ‘Oh, I know him. I can call him and ask.’”

Glossing further on the collaborations, Cintra adds, “We ask everybody…. Asking doesn’t hurt.” They even went so far as to ask Justin Timberlake. Lovefoxxx explains, “The only one who said no was Justin. But the rest, they all said yes.”

“If we hear like 1,000 no’s but one yes, that’s cool,” adds Cintra.

“We’re like drunk frat boys!” guitarist Luiza Sá jokes. “We’re Brazilian—we never give up”

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