Brightest Young Things

all photos: Irfan Khalil

CSS started as a secret that only you knew about. You heard about them on Mad Decent and put them in your breast pocket, like a weapon, to be brandished at anyone who thought globalization was bad for music. "Oh yeah, well I know about a Brazilian disco-punk band that hates sex and loves Death From Above!" Eventually other gunslingers started drawing them out faster than you, and détente was achieved. But you still considered CSS one of those special elitist joys only a true music nerd can have—that somewhere out there is a product so unique and outlandish that only the perfectly curious can share it—maybe movie nerds feel that way about Klaus Kinski? I'm not sure.

But when I squeezed into the 930 club Saturday evening all that mythology popped like bubble wrap. CSS is big-time. .They have a wacky stage set-up. They have giant US festival credits. Most importantly, they have a legion of barely illegal fans (mostly grrls) with creative haircuts which necessitates a 7pm show. They marched out onstage and the joint went wild, hanging off the balconies and throwing glowstick bracelets at each other, and all my small town illusions fell away and were replaced with Big City dreamsicles.

I had to kick my way to the front, and then kick my way back out again to hang up my coat and then slap a couple of lurking parents around in the back of the crowd to maneuver my way back to the front. A note: you can do this. It's OK. It's general admission. If you want to stand in the front, just seize the diem and ignore the looks of disgust. Ask forgiveness, not permission. Triumph of the Will. And so on. By the time I returned, the craziest fans had taken up residence in the middle of the floor, personified by two wild women with rattails who were either lesbians some avenging goddesses from Greek Mythology. They commenced mosh-krumping to Meeting Paris Hilton, flinging people around, heaving one dude through the top of the crowd onto his head and humping everything in site. It was love at first fist. By the middle of the set kids had totally followed their lead and were paying little attention to the band, just thrashing around and bouncing backwards and fist pumping.

I was having trouble making writerly observations about the music, to say the least. I can say that their sound has changed drastically, but incrementally. So you can see the connection between the slower groovier glam rock from their newest album and the lean funkpunk of the early singles, and I'm sure it's slowly emerged on stage for them, but to me it was like going to see Ziggy Stardust and getting Let's Dance. Which, fuck it, rules in its own right. My favorites were the slower, glittery jams like Move or Let´s Reggae All Night. On record they are fun, if paper-thin Blondie/Tom-Tom club pastiches, but live with the big real drums and the big guitars they're way more in a Madchester Happy Mondays thumpthump hop-around mode. I couldn't stop saying "Happy Mondays". "Happy Mondays!" I said to someone in the madness. "Well it's Saturday…" they deadpanned. This really happened.

And just like the Mondays, it was all about the glamour. They threw balloons to us and we blew them up and floated them around. They threw glitter at us and we wore it. They sprayed water on us which didn't help with the smell (200 teenagers in one room stinks like canine estrus in midsummer, but in a gross way) but we splashed around in it. They asked us to do an arm-wavy dance thing and we did. Lovefoxxx started her career as a long-banged shy childlike anti-sex-symbol. At this show though she was dressed like some combination of the Riddler and David Lee Roth, with a kung-fu movie haircut. When she asked the crowd to part like the red sea so her and the keytar player (did I stutter? pay attention motherfucker they bringin the madd keytar) could catwalk up and back on the floor during the last song of their regular set, and she was marching between the walls of writhing fans like Bjork channeling Beyonce, she seemed light years beyond the fey broken-English-tweeting ingénue of 2004. And during the encore when she crowd-surfed almost all the way to the back bar without losing her mic or her place in the song she proved…actually she'd already proved everything she needed to prove, that was just fucking awesome.

So by the end of the encore usually a crowd is pretty exhausted, whether or not they were dancing up a storm, but the energy just kept building and building (maybe because it was only 10 o'clock?) and finally kids started climbing onstage (holy crap there are my Amazons, how did they get up there so fast?) and the opening band SSION appeared onstage (Who look great and I know I'm an asshole for missing them but they went on at like 8pm and that's not really an excuse but I'm an asshole) and somehow the usual fuckhead muscledick security at 930 didn't throw everyone off and everyone is chanting into the mics and the music is raving and Lovefoxxx goes "Thanks so much a lot this is fucking amazing show!" and suddenly someone hits a button and the speakers go:

WEEEEEEE ARE THE CHAAAAAMPYUNS

UNTIL THE END……..

And then a techno remix of Queen is playing and everyone is still dancing but now they're singing at the top of their lungs too. All the kids are herded offstage and the band is grinning and linking arms and singing along "WEEEE ARRRRRR THE CHAAAAAAMPYUNS, NOOOOOO TIME FOR LOOOOOOSERS…"

Some music that gets classified as Nu-rave or Scene or techno-punk exposes the dark side of a party—celebrating drugs and death and dirty sex and squalor and regret and more death. And sometimes that's helpful and creative and interesting. But some party music wants to exist INSTEAD of hotsex, instead of nihilism and depression, as a replacement of pure joy and color. Waiting for 45 minutes to get my coat among the sweaty lines of youngsters and their bemused parents, just as the spell started to wear off and I wondered if that innocence could survive the stadiums and international exposure and expanded budgets, the kids started to sing another universal song of victory: "OLE OLEOLE OLE! OLE! OLE!" Sometimes it's as simple as that, and all the light shows and popularity can't change the fundamental promise a band makes to its audience.
CSS says that you are not a loser.
CSS says that you are not a freak.
CSS says you are a winner. Of the world.

Previously in Live DC:

• 2/9: LiveDC: Theophilus London @ 930 Club
• 2/9: Best Weekend Bets
• 2/8: LiveDC: Kathleen Edwards @ 930 Club
• 2/8: LiveDC: Thurston Moore/ Kurt Vile @ Black Cat
• 2/8: LiveDC: Thurston Moore/ Kurt Vile @ Black Cat
• 2/7: LiveDC: Demetri Martin @ Warner Theatre
• 2/7: LiveDC: Augustana/ Graffiti6 @ 930 Club
• 2/6: LiveDC: All Things Go Presents: Reptar/ Casual Curious/ Fort Lean @ Gibson Guitar Showroom
• 2/6: LiveDC: TYCHO/ Beacon @ RNR Hotel
• 2/6: LiveDC: The Kills / Jeff The Brotherhood @ 9:30 Club