You Say Party!, We Say Die!

The 100 Club’s basement dwelling is like a walled-in time capsule from the 1970s, with each step down from the pavement on Oxford Street transporting you back a year. Deep reds, wood finishes and creamy, off-white overtones add kitch factor that feels like you’re caught in the workings of a golden era X-movie, as if behind any of the Jazz Club’s doors sits Linda Lovelace primping her perm, preparing to get deep down and dirty.

In such allusive surroundings, You Say Party! We Say Die! complete the picture like flashing diodes on a pulse-monitor, keeping everything wired and alive. The brooding Canadian five-piece play visceral dance-punk that’s as immediate as it is idiosyncratic. By all intents, YSP! WSD! are one of the most exciting new bands around and you’d be more time-efficient to stop reading this here and go buy their album ‘Hit The Floor’ right NOW.

Lead singer Becky Ninkovic is as retro as the surroundings, her massive bob of hair hugging her face like a peace-loving hippy. Her dance moves flip from borderline ballet choreography to flailing about on her back doing bicycle kicks in the air. She’s like a rabid incarnation of the old Top Of The Pops dancing troupe and it’s a thrill to watch.

The songs are great. Warming us up with opener ‘Love In The New Millennium’ is a gradual awakening, infused with the hot anticipation of an Olympic starter-gun countdown. Then BANG! we’re off, and for forty-five minutes the band collide about the stage playing thrash you can dance to do – something which there’s just not enough of these days.

‘He! She! You! Me! They! We! Us! Ok!’ and ‘Cold Hands! Hot Bodies!’ justify their exclamation indulgence with attacking rock hooks that grab you by the shoulders and shake you until you’re puking with excitement.

Occasionally songs slip under the excitement radar, ‘Apocalypse Miaow’ could have stayed in the practice room, but who am I to complain when they follow it with stutter-rock anthem ‘The Gap (Between The Rich And The Poor)’, one of the most underrated indie single of the year.

Finishing their set with ‘Don’t Wait Up’, the pseudo-lullaby that escalates into another synth-punk epic, underscores their hyperactive nature with some soaring vocal melodies that wrap the whole experience up as the perfect embodiment of style and substance in equilibrium.

Quite simply, You Say Party! We Say Die! are amazing, allow them into your life.

FUTURE GIGS

sorry, we currently have no gigs listed for this act.