Does If Offend You, Yeah - You have no idea what you are getting yourself into

Marcus Warner 21/04/2008

Rating: 4/5

Let me be open and honest with you; I discovered dance music in its purest and best form through dabbling with illegal substances, and despite the love of substances leaving my blood, the love of dance music has not. Many of my friends are real dance connoisseurs; and offer the same frown when I show them some 'indie' dance as I do when they tell me they love the Kaiser Chiefs.

I've learned to glean the value of having this distance, because guitar kids are all too quick to dismiss dance music as the abode of mindless loons listening to a repetitive beat. See I 'm now versed enough the earthly pleasures of dance music (electro-house especially) to safely say that many 'indie/dance' crossover acts are merely indie kids with electronic additions to their sound. The Stone Roses have fuck all to do with dance music, they just chose that as their after party soundtrack. What would really be great if a band who understood dance music (the dynamics, the use of layers) and then perhaps used a bit of indie 101 for the finishing touches…

Well, I think I can safely say that I have found the second album (the first was 'Wet From Birth' by The Faint) that I can play my dance friends, that has dance and rock credibility- Does If Offend You, Yeah's 'You have no idea what you are getting yourself into'. 'Battle Royale' and 'Rockstars' stand out in particular they could grace any electro night and rock the joint without even making people think it was the 'indie' song that some Djs like to play. It's that credibility, the ability of their songs that allow them to be judged as DANCE tunes without prefixing it with INDIE that makes those two songs so special. Indeed, the most dance orientated songs are this album's best; a few fillers and 'horrorshow' indie noise tracks cannot bring this album down. Perhaps it is this lack of direction on some of the tracks that doesn't make it a 5/5 but none the less, it's bloody bonza. So there we have it, buy this album!