Does It Offend You, Yeah?
Don't Say We Didn't Warn You

Pitchfork.com, that arbiter of music taste - that last bastion of all things good in the musical multiverse - didn't like Does It Offend You, Yeah?'s first album. They called it "barely adequate dance-rock... doggedly ugly, riff-driven electro" and described DIOYY as "a hard band to warm to." Fuck them. I thought it was great. True, sometimes the band's tendency to dip into noisy "electro" irritates, but they alternated their squelchier tendencies with mid-tempo melodic rockers. I saw them open for Nine Inch Nails on their Lights In The Sky tour, and had it been any other band up there I would have been bored and checking my watch. Instead, I had a great time.

God knows how they're going to take the new album, Don't Say We Didn't Warn You. It starts off with the band's usual irreverence - a clip of them in the studio, farting around on an acoustic guitar - but soon accelerates into the band's signature sound, which is like a busted computer farting out blood on the mixing desk. This band likes their keyboards broken and covered in puke, and the Zulu chanting on the background of starter track "We Are The Dead" only adds to the air of fucked up musicians partying.

But whereas before, the band was content to shift between music and noise, now, they blend the two. Before "We Are The Dead" is over, the acoustic guitar returns, and it demonstrates a young band growing more confident in their abilities. Two follow-up tracks - "John Hurt" and "Pull Out My Insides" - are absolutely stellar variations on this theme, and the opening trio is worth the price of admission alone. "John Hurt" is a symphony of sound on a blown speaker system - did that "Woo! Yeah!" sample of James Brown, which so many artists have used that it has its own Wikipedia page - while "Insides" is more confessional, more pleading, more like the emotionally charged music that closed out their first album.

Of course, nothing great can last forever, and the album does lag as it continues. "Wrong Time Wrong Planet" is a slinky bass-driven vamp that goes seemingly nowhere and descends into meaningless Fairlight fondling in its second half. "Wrestler" features a sample of someone shouting "Fuck you, you're wrong! Fuck you, we're right!" that's more tiresome than interesting, and "Wondering" has a sample rap by UK grime artist Trip that doesn't interest me in following up on any Trip records, if you know what I'm saying.

DIOYY like to end things on a high note, if their first album is any indication, and the closer here, "Broken Arms," is a beautiful, slowly building ballad which consolidates the band's strengths and brings back the acoustic guitar. It's nothing wonderful, but it's certainly a lot of fun, and contains enough earworms to keep you coming back for more. Pitchfork may pooh-pooh all they like - I'll take Does It Offend You, Yeah? over half of their Best New Musics any day.