Review: You Say Party! We Say Die! – XXXX

“You Say Party! We Say Die!” is a name that makes me cringe. I am a shallow, superficial person who loathes punctuation abuse. Firstly, WHY are there exclamation points within a band name, are they REALLY necessary? Secondly, if it is ABSOLUTELY VITAL that they be there, WHY not go all the way and insert the appropriate commas and quotation marks. Your name, m’dears, should really be You Say ‘Party!’, We Say ‘Die!’

Yes, so, this mistreatment of grammar makes me very grumpy. I decide to get revenge. I attach to my noggin my criticalest pair of ears. And I push play. And then I am made even more grumpy as the final question that bubbles up in my brain is WHY must they be so GOOD? Damn cognitive dissonance.

For starters, I did not expect to hear what I heard when opener ‘There is XXXX (Within My Heart)’ wafted, rather than blazed, out of my headphones. Given that their name (with or without the appalling mistreatment of punctuation) superficially implies rebellious (die!) dance-pop (party!), it is a bit of a surprise to have the first song caress your eardrums rather than assault them. Breathy and minimalistic and littered with a woodwind (?) it is only two minutes into it that you realise XXXX means ‘love’. A discovery confirmed by the songs later on the album ‘Make XXXX’ and the puzzlingly named ‘XXXX/Loyalty’ (do you pronounce the slash?).

‘Glory’, on the other hand, is the cheerleader to ‘There is XXXX’s flautist-in-the-school-band. Playful and flirtatious, it inserts comical little gasps after every defiant utterance of such scandalous terms as “sex!” and “drugs!” ‘Cosmic Wanship Avengers,’ fittingly enough, sounds like it belongs behind the opening credits of a mid-90s superhero anime assisted by lyrics like “I want to find you in a dark alleyway” and “I know you’re scared/like the coward who hides inside”.

I am particularly fond of ‘Lonely’s Lunch’ (a lot of these song names leave you going ‘what?!’). The insanely excellent refrain ‘inside out, outside in’ is probably the catchiest of the lot and there’s an organ thrown in to make things even more interesting, YSP!WSD! (see not good as an acronym, either) pawn a bit of The Police as they bridge the song with whimpers of “so lonely, lonely lonely.”

You Say Party! We Say Die! seem surprised at their success in their homeland (Canada). They speak of the novel bizarreness of having their faces staring back at them from more than one magazine cover. They really shouldn’t be so shocked. They’re very accessible but in a cool, underground way.

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