ACL Fest Live Shots
Saturday, Sept. 16, Zilker Park
By Greg Beets, Fri., Sept. 22, 2006
Brazilian Girls
As the sun set on day two of ACL 2006, a large, enthusiastic tent full of fervent party-down devotees greeted New York's Brazilian Girls. The crowd gave themselves willingly even as the quartet never quite secured a place of musical distinction. Performing with her eyes concealed, vocalist Sabina Sciubba sings a bit like Björk and her onstage comportment vaguely resembles Zsa Zsa Gabor. The cleverness of Sciubba's cabaret-style routine wore ever thinner as the show rolled on. It reached its retrospectively inevitable nadir when she led the crowd in one of those pandering sing-alongs where everyone gets to say "pussy." Prior to that, the quartet's grab bag of rhythms spanned the gamut from techno and space-age cocktail pop to reggae. The more memorable songs from Talk to La Bomb, like the nonsense-titled "Jique," proved fun summer confections when taken live. Warbling carnival piano by keyboardist Didi Gutman during "All About Us" was as close to transcendence as the Brazilian Girls got. It was enough to make bystanders wonder how much more fun the group might be in a more intimate setting, but not enough to keep them from wandering off to the chicken cone stand.
