When NYC-born downtempo-electro outfit Brazilian Girls formed in 2003, none of the members hailed form Brazil. Fifteen years later, none of them are located in New York, either.
The band’s dynamic has shifted significantly since we last heard from them on 2008 album New York City, which was followed by a hefty silence and exactly one single to bridge the gap in between. But the emotional funk is over for the quartet, and the actual funk is alive as ever on their new album Let’s Make Love, out last month via Six Degrees Records — and the band wants you to hear the difference.
“We certainly didn’t plan it [the break] like that. We had a bad vibe among us for a while, which is perfectly pretty normal for any band that’s been together for a while,” says bassist Jesse Murphy. “Our music influences and tastes have gone to different areas of interest. You can hear it on the album. The songwriting has changed, the aesthetics have changed, if for no other reason than to keep it interesting for us.”
To celebrate their return from their sizable hibernation, the group hits up Brighton Music Hall with Northampton’s Sun Parade and DJ Carbo on Sunday (May 6), packing all the world-electro fusion they can summon.
“You are what you listen to, like you are what you eat, and we listen to a wide range and variety of music,” Murphy says of the group’s eclectic — and noticeable — influences. On Let’s Make Love, the exotic blends of dance music and more worldly and traditional folk music are revamped with a certain freshness, as is their noir sense of humor.
“It’s actually both risqué and romantic,” Murphy says of the album name. “Originally the working title for the album was Back on Bottom, which has a certain self-defeating type of sense of humor that we like. But then a lot of times we end up realizing that nobody else but ourselves laughs at our jokes.”
But really, the joke’s on anyone who put their money on an official Brazilian Girls breakup.
BRAZILIAN GIRLS + SUN PARADE + DJ CARBO :: Sunday, May 6 at Brighton Music Hall, 158 Brighton Ave. in Allston, MA :: 7:30 p.m., 18+, $20 advance, $25 day of show :: Advance tickets :: Featured photo by Nora Lezano.