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Brazilian Girls 'New York City'

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Over the course of two previous studio albums and countless all-nighters at their East Village clubhouse, Nublu, Brazilian Girls has established a reputation as New York’s premier international party band. To attend a Brazilian Girls show is to experience something like time travel: No one else is quite as capable of making a few hours fly by like a few minutes.

For the Girls’ third full-length—the follow-up to 2006’s Talk to La Bomb, singer Sabina Sciubba says she, keyboardist Didi Gutman and drummer Aaron Johnston (bassist Jesse Murphy is on hiatus from the group) wanted to slow down their process. The result of nearly eight months’ worth of work on their own and with producer Hector Castillo, the boldly titled New York City is Brazilian Girls’ most sophisticated, dynamic effort yet. To be sure, the album contains its fair share of uptempo party-starters: “We just want to have a good time all the time,” Sciubba admits gleefully over an infectious hand-clap beat in the aptly named “Good Time,” while “Losing Myself” rides a go-go organ groove.

Yet New York City also reveals a deeper, more contemplative side of Brazilian Girls’ sound, one that Johnston says reflects the band’s desire to “actually sit down and write rather than just jam at the club.” They certainly succeed on that count. “Strangeboy” is a spooky avant-cabaret number in which Sciubba’s echo-chamber vocals float uneasily over forbidding haunted-house horns. “Ricardo” has a sly spy-movie throb. “I Want Out” features gorgeous choral vocals that call to mind Björk’s work on Vespertine. “Mano De Dios” could be the soundtrack to your next yoga session. For “Internacional,” a sleek future-lounge throwdown, Brazilian Girls were joined in the studio by Senegalese superstar Baba Maal, a happy byproduct of Sciubba and Gutman’s work on Maal’s own forthcoming album.

The members of the band are sure that the wide variety of fans who make up Brazilian Girls’ diverse audience will respond to their latest explorations. “Rather than something cool or hip, I think people are looking for something that touches them,” says Sciubba. “Everyone needs a little love right now.” And they’ll certainly find it—prepare to be shaken!

DL: Brazilian Girls - Good Time

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