Bossanova "Rare Brazil"

Don’t let the band name or the song title fool you—this isn’t some sort of found item rescued from South American obscurity and released on Soul Jazz or Luaka Bop. It’s the Teenbeat Records-sponsored and long-simmering project of Vancouver’s Chris Storrow, with help here and there from Kurt Dahle (New Pornographers) and Amber Wells (Black Mountain), like the good Canadians they are. The first I heard of Bossanova was the seductive synth-and-falsetto sheen of “The Tongue of the Asp” on Teenbeat’s great 2003 sampler (buy), and Storrow’s M.O. was as instantly recognizable then as it is on Hey Sugar, his first full-length. “Rare Brazil” (mp3) is the centerpiece, a densely compacted, nearly eight-minute long lite-brite full-band disco freakout featuring some irresistable cascading and rippling Moog synths among the rubber-band bass and hi-hat snare foundation. There’s really not anything separating this from disco, save its indie rock label representation and year of release, but even that doesn’t make it too out of place on a label like Teenbeat, where barely concealed and implacable sexuality has been known to worm its way into music in the most interesting ways (cf. Unrest).

Buy Hey Sugar from Teenbeat here. Bossanova’s website.