Cansei de Ser Sexy

"Your mouth is stuck to a thousand fags," cheerfully raps the one known as Lovefoxxx at the end of the song called "Jager Yoga." And this is Cansei de Ser Sexy's serious album. No, really—next song's about spousal abuse. But fuck the heck, you guys: No one knows what to do with CSS. Not Sub Pop, not Apple, not proponents of, uh, "nu-rave." I guess we're supposed to dance, guiltily: "Let's Reggae All Night" has a nice locked-in squelch to it, but I wish the line I heard as "let's break the bed in half" wasn't actually "break my back in half." Which prompts the question: Does this band even get its own shtick? Why did they call the album Donkey? Why does "Reggae All Night" have nothing to do with reggae?

However ill-conceived their tinny beats, swiped hooks—"Rat Is Dead (Rage)" grooves on a chuggy Hives riff—and questionable "fun" quotient, these dance-punk displacements here present a tuneful, synth-shined step up from their more annoyingly hit-or-miss debut (which began with a chant called "CSS Suxx"). But their newfound tastefulness comes at a cost: less personality, annoying or not.

Maybe they are generic-alt hangers-on. But their bid for a career is at least as good as, like, Santogold's.