In 2008 when Does It Offend You, Yeah? came onto my radar with their dancefloor debut You Have No Idea What You’re Getting Yourself Into I thought that they were both the UK’s answer to France’s Daft Punk as well as a pleasant addition to the great game of “Is this a sentence or a band name” (see: Saturday Looks Good To Me, Say Hi To Your Mom, Clap Your Hands And Say Yeah, etc.) Fun fact: The band are named after one of Ricky Gervais’ lines from the British version of The Office.
Since their debut the band has seemed to be classified as everything from dance-punk to synthpop to electro house to new rave to indie rock. Whatever label you decide to file them under, Does It Offend You, Yeah? will probably disrupt it again with their new album, Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn You (cover above) out March 15th on The End Records.
Frontman James Rushent promises that it will be a “fucking mess”: “We want to perform music that, if we heard it, we’d go ‘oh, who’s that?’ rather than ‘here’s another f***ing ‘60s soul artist.’ [The 18 months spent recording the album] was stressful, panicky and hard work. It’s the nature of how we work. It’s like trying to put a jigsaw together where you don’t know what the picture is at the end. I think it’s about time we have a f***ing mess.” Synth master Dan Coop concurs, “This is our break-out album. It has got balls-out angry stuff and serene melancholic, quite depressing stuff as well. We’d rather show all our hands like that than write a whole album that sounds the same.”
With an album cover like that, I can’t imagine that a live show of new material won’t be any less amazing. Does It Offend You, Yeah? play at The Bell House tomorrow night. The show is $15 and Deluka and Infernal Devices are opening.
