CSS: Korova Bar, Liverpool, Wednesday November 15

First up, a bit of biology: is the Y chromosome entangled in your genetic make-up? OK. Whip off your belt and peer down into your undercrackers: is that a cock dangling between your legs? Alright. Finally – and if you’ve answered yes to both of the above, this is the important bit – are you in a band? A really dull guitar band called something like The Dribbling Idiots, The Shonky Twats or Hard-Fi. Yes? Well, NME’s sorry to break this to you guys, but it’s over. You’re finished. Go on, piss off; in 2006 and 2007, it’s atomic-cool women running the show. Lung-busting soul divas such as Beth Ditto. Literate pop sirens such as Kate Jackson. New Young Pony Club. Karen O. Lily Allen. Girls Aloud. And, bringing us neatly round to tonight, five-sixths (drummer Adriano, looking like a Latino Super Mario, is something of an anomaly) of São Paulo electro-popsters CSS. It’s as yet unclear whether we can include diminutive pop-pixie singer Lovefoxxx in this all-conquering female bracket though: supposedly half-Japanese, half-Brazilian, she looks more like the girl who fell to Earth – an alien pop-being sent from some strange far-away plane to spew lyrical filth for our benefit.

Unless you’re some idiot, by now you’ll know all about her imploring us to lick her “art tit” and suck her “art hole”, as she rubs up against pounding grunge guitars on ‘Art Bitch’. You’ll have heard her vamping lusciously over Nintendo electro on ‘Alala’. But that’s nothing compared to the between-song banter tonight. “Talking of ‘art holes’,” she tells us, sounding like Brazil’s answer to Roy Chubby Brown.

“I had such a big crap before I came onstage, the ground shook!” Maybe they’re more open about their bowel habits in Brazil; whatever, from the moment Lovefoxxx is beamed onto the cramped basement stage tonight chanting ‘CSS Suxx’’s opening hypnotic mantra, she’s in a bubble; a little world of her own. A world that is smack bang in the middle of a sweaty throng of adoring Scouse fashionistas. Tonight at times it’s hard to distinguish her from her fans, as she hyperactively springs back and forth into the crowd, thrusting her arms in all directions like a demented cheerleader. It’s a vibe that she revels in: “You, my sweaty darlings…” she smiles after leading the throng through a boozy rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ for guitarist Carolina Moraes Parra, “…are a sea of love.”

Her bandmates, too, get in the communal spirit – switching between drums, keys and guitars like a bunch of amphetamine-kids let loose in a music shop, conjuring up an orgasmic electro-rock canvas upon which Lovefoxxx coos a melange of curiously fractured English coital euphemisms on tunes like ‘Music Is My Hot Hot Sex’.

After a sexually-charged set-closer of ‘Let’s Make Love And Listen To Death From Above’, the crowd are begging, panting, and demanding more. Blocking the exit door, they refuse to let the band leave without four encores. “We’ve run out of songs,” pleads Lovefoxxx as she crowdsurfs across the room, dusts herself down, heads backstage and (probably) clambers into a spaceship to head for home. And NME? We leave breathless, inspired and heading straight to Harley Street for ‘the chop’ and our next oestrogen injection.

Rick Martin