With their lead singer sensually delivering her witty lyrics in five different languages while the band skillfully flirts with house, dub, and plenty of other cosmopolitan genres of music in the background,
the Brazilian Girls'
Talk to La Bomb revisits nearly all the elements that made their 2005 self-titled debut such a thrill, but the songwriting has slipped a bit, welcoming the beloved act to the sophomore slump. With great ideas hidden deep inside wandering tracks and more loose numbers than it should have,
Talk to La Bomb feels a lot like the B-sides and remixes collections plenty of other bands follow a killer debut with, which means fans will get something substantial out of it but they won't be able to convert their friends. There's still some solid reason to cheer for the band with the
Ric Ocasek-produced "Last Call" being a delicious kind of comfortable pop-house, while "Sweatshop" offers a winning combination of sexuality and
Stereolab. The tribal "Tourist Trap" gets reckless in the tropics with its fun tale of "lighting up at the pool/peeing into the ocean" and the closing "Problem" is the Vogue magazine/punk rocker
the Girls always seemed to have in them, but tracks like "Sexy Asshole" and "Never Met a German" are forgettable and feel like they were written because somebody dropped a clever song name.
Talk to La Bomb indulges every whim you'd expect on an odds-and-sods compilation, so pretend it is and adjust your expectations accordingly. ~ David Jeffries