by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Equal parts glitter and grit, the second album from New York’s Brazilian Girls, Talk to la Bomb, isn’t just one of the best dance-music albums of the year, but also one of the most punk rock. It’s one thing to smash a guitar and scream, “Fuck Bush,” another entirely to use a cosmopolitan, hedonistic blend of house, jazz, rock, electro and worldbeat as a Trojan horse for some dark and provocative ideas, both lyrically and musically.

The quartet stops short of thumping anyone over the head with their views, though. In fact, cheekily oblique is their general M.O.—they boast no Brazilians (though keyboardist Didi Gutman is Argentine) and only one woman, their debonair, polyglot Euro-fox chanteuse, Sabina Sciubba, who took a quick break from ordering some haute cuisine to chat with the Mirror.

Mirror: First thing I have to ask is, what does the title of track one, the word “jique,” mean?

Sabina Sciubba: Hee-que.

M: Jee-keh.

SS: Maybe if you pronounce it—I’m gonna tell you exactly how to pronounce it, and then maybe you’ll understand. Nnnnnnnnn… jique.

M: Yee-keh.

SS: No, let’s try it again. Nnnnnnnnn… jique.

M: Nnnnnnnn… yee-kay.

SS: (giggling) No, it really means whatever you want it to mean. It means something that’s enticing, that’s tempting.

M: What language is it?

SS: It’s a Dada language. It’s Brazilian—Girls Brazilian.

M: Now, “Never Met a German”—that’s a nice piece of harsh black comedy about war and the base, animal-level emotions that drive it. It suggests World War II, but if anything, looking at the mess in Iraq and the Israeli overkill in Lebanon—

SS: Yeah, it refers to WWII, but it’s not talking about WWII at all, actually. It’s talking completely about the present situation, and it’s talking about denial. If you’re talking about the Germans or anyone else, it’s kind of the same, no? As you say, it’s a really base, animal instinct. If you want to see how great a man is, give him power. See if he uses it responsibly—unfortunately, I think, most people won’t. I would certainly include myself (laughs).

The wrong right way

M: I’ve been wrestling with “Talk to the Bomb” since the record came out, trying to figure out if it’s about suicide bombers, kids who shoot up their high schools, Kim Il-Jong or George Bush. Could you help me out with that one?

SS: Yeah, it’s a little more abstract, actually. It’s about being coherent, and dealing with the consequences of your behaviour. And I’m referring specifically to politicians. I wouldn’t be as limited as just pointing my finger at George W. Bush, because I consider him really just the tiny, tiny little tip of an iceberg. I think it goes much further than that, and even more unfortunately, it’s a worldwide thing that’s going on. I don’t think it’s just the United States, they were just the first ones to be really blunt about it. But it’s really going on all over the place, most disappointingly in Europe, which I thought was immune to that—but it’s not.

M: Yeah, it’s been depressing, watching the rightward swing of some parts of Europe, Denmark—

SS: And Germany!

M: And the Swedes! The Swedes! Well, they haven’t gone too far right, but—the Swedes!

SS: But still, it’s a kind of statement. The move to the right, right now, is kind of like a statement.

Tongue-fu

M: I’m sure you’re asked a lot about your singing in five languages, but if it’s okay, I’d like to get into that. Each language, rightly or wrongly, carries certain stereotypes with it. When you choose a language for a particular lyric or song, what motivates your choice?

SS: It’s true that I get that question quite a bit, and I don’t have a really good answer, because it’s very instinctive. It’s much more of a choice of sonority, because every language has a melody. Italian is a lyrical language, a language of pathos and emotion—for swearing, also, it’s great. English is very good for pop music, in my opinion at least, because it has a lot of one-syllable words, but it’s also great for business. It has the business thing, I don’t know. With Didi, for example, we always speak in Spanish, but when we have to do business, we immediately slip into English. German is a language that is good for very specific descriptions, it has a lot of words, and you can combine words, so there’s a word for the most specific thing. Actually, English is similar in that way. In Italian or French, the one word will mean five different things. So then the language becomes quite poetic, because it remains very interpretable.

With DJ Alex Robbins at la Tulipe tonight,
Thursday, Oct. 12, 9 p.m., $22.50

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