By their very nature, British Columbia band You Say Party! We Say Die! seem reductive. Who's to say that hedonism and destruction are the only alternatives-- or that they're mutually exclusive? Fusing the leftist party-punk of Le Tigre with the dark, militant dramatics of Pretty Girls Make Graves, full-length debut Hit the Floor! neatly strips punk rock and politics alike (one and the same, really) to just get with the beat-- or get beaten. Exclamation point, exclamation point. Synthesizer!
Nocturnal guitar stabs, mournful harmonies, dance-mother-fucker bass, and clanging hardcore beats advance the band's agenda of overthrowing, well, something. YSP!WSD! has a knack for emphatic codas that all but slip its agitprop past the brain's trusting hook receptors. Singer Becky Minkovic's voice exudes a horn-rimmed idealism that charms even as she shouts breathlessly for violence. "We're gonna take 'em down in numbers one by one!" Minkovic repeats on "The Gap (Between the Rich and the Poor)" as it surges into a bridge fit for a riot or a noise violation, then sighs, "All we want is for things to be fair." As a generational rallying cry, not quite "No one here gets out alive," is it? All the better. The instruments still dip into martial call-and-response. The opening instrumental and final hidden track bookend the album with synth-washed apocalypse-- explosions, flames crackling, clocks pealing-- but first this band's painting the town red.
Indeed, the object is less Poli Sci discussion-section and more full-body participation. The physical realm looms large both musically and lyrically, from the yawpy, hand-clapping pogo-punk of "Cold Hands! Hot Bodies!" to the spinning, dipping "Midnight Snack" and "Stockholm Syndrome Part One" in all its skin-and-bones frenzy. The bouncy multi-part pop of "You Did It!" could pass for Architecture in Helsinki, goofily cheering, "Now throw away your pack of lies!" The band's politics-- personal and otherwise-- and its punk are ultimately about self-determination: "I will follow me," Minkovic proclaims at the end of "Stockholm Syndrome Part Two". Of course, what's inside the body has a beat, too. "Hold it in your chest," she chimes on you-say-die-another-day hopscotcher "He! She! You! Me! They! Us! OK!" The songs are all better than their titles, I swear.
Still, beneath the oddly thrilling over-the-counter leftism and patchwork punk, YSP!WSD may be a sensitive band waiting to reveal itself. Translucent mid-tempo anthem "Don't Wait Up" unfolds like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' heartbreaker "Maps", right down to waiting and breakup-precipice subject matter. "Can't let my head believe what my heart already has received," Minkovic pronounces wispily, eventually building into another sloganeering coda: "I'm your truth/ You be dare." On "Midnight Snack", she pledges to "build a moment out of feathers" for a tired lover, toeing the line between vulgar sentimentality and soaring romanticism like a certain Pretty Girls Make Graves namesake (Steven, not Jack). So too the hidden track, which lays a timeless, vocoderrific mortal sentiment over a bed of synths: "It's our last night on Earth/ Let's be together." Turns out dance parties and revolutionary politics are easy; love is the big exclamation point exclamation point period. Question mark.
