It's been a full decade since the last Brazilian Girls disc, but "Let's Make Love" — the fourth full-length album for this New York group of three men, one woman, and precisely zero Brazilians — wisely makes little attempt to update their geographically unmoored alt-dance sound for modern ears.
Amusingly, this may be because the Top-40 landscape has spent the past 10 years catching up to them, expanding to embrace the same sort of global wave-riding at which Brazilian Girls have long excelled.
The quartet — Italian-German frontwoman Sabina Sciubba, Argentine keyboardist Didi Gutman, New York-bred bassist Jesse Murphy, and Kansan jazz drummer Aaron Johnston — formed at a Manhattan club called NuBlu, a noted site of communion for international artists, in 2003. Years before Drake adopted a Jamaican patois or Justin Bieber pushed a Latin pop gem to record-breaking chart success, this group was affixing reggae-dancehall grooves to U.K.-influenced acid jazz, borrowing from everything in between to inform their own borderless sensibilities.
Though the best tracks on their new album sustain this transcontinental tenor — as well as the post-disco '80s aesthetic they have down to a science — "Let's Make Love" also finds Brazilian Girls diving into straightforward, synth-assisted pop territory.
Both sonically and lyrically, this is a more radio-ready effort than past records, though the band's eclecticism could never be simply polished away. As its title suggests, Brazilian Girls remain puckish hedonists, whether going out on the town in the hard-driving, punk-tinted "Go Out More Often" or slipping between the sheets for the punchy title track. That said, their best shot at a hit single this time around may be "Woman in the Red," with its hazy lyricism and fuzzed-out monster of a bassline.
On the breathy dance-floor seduction "Balla Balla" and bossa nova sashay "Salve," Sciubba sounds slyly sensuous as ever, her singular vocals still serving as the band's best argument. The lissome "Karaköy" and elegant "Sunny Days" showcase her softer side, while conjuring melancholic senses of place. "Let's Make Love" does suffer from a few too-hasty tonal shifts, especially in its underwhelming first quarter, but that Brazilian Girls so often retain their edge will, for fans, be reason enough to get back out on the floor.
Brazilian Girls perform at Brighton Music Hall on May 6. Tickets: www.ticketmaster.com
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