Live Review

Does It Offend You, Yeah? – Liverpool Carling Academy

• 7th Nov 2008

As DIOYY?’s debut album had been on heavy rotation on my Cd player since it’s release, this was one gig I was most certainly looking forward to. Having already seen the electro-punk Reading four piece grace the stage prior to it’s release at some of Liverpool’s lesser known, smaller and some may say ‘more intimate’ venues -I knew I was in for a treat – but I was still somewhat curious to see whether my appreciation of the band or their performance would differ on a bigger stage in front of a bigger audience. Plus, this time I had a handful more songs to sing along to and a better idea of how they should sound.

Unbeknownst to me on the same night, DOIYY’s new wave indie electronic ‘forefathers’ Hot Chip were also playing the same venue but in a different room – I was therefore happy to see that the popularity of the aforementioned hadn’t seemed to affect the crowd gathering to watch the two support acts – British bands Lets Talk Tactics and South Central. LTT were your fairly bog standard and typical opening act affair, although their youthful exuberance and onstage antics added to the spectacle, there wasn’t much in the way of ‘choons’. Plus his voice was pretty mediocre.

South Central on the other hand were a band I’d heard of and enjoyed in the past. Since I had last seen them their performance and sound had matured and despite the word ‘polished’ sounding somewhat clichéd and not quite fitting for the scatological beeps and bleeps approach to their music and onstage manoeuvres – it was aurally pretty ‘buff’. In hindsight they came pretty close to being the highlight of the night they were that good. Definitely a band to look out for in the future if not the now.

Having said all that, Does It Offend You, Yeah? themselves did not disappoint. They dutifully informed everyone during the gig that their first performance ever was actually in Liverpool’s Korova, warming the audience’s hearts by letting us know that Liverpool held a nice little spot in their hearts. They played accordingly – chanting “Liverpool” over their synth heated sound whilst the crowd looked on in amusement – deciding whether to dance like they were at an old school rave, or rock out as if they were watching Muse, such is their varied and genre-spanning sound.

This is a band with great talent, great promise and an already great, albeit still in its infancy, nice little cannon of tunes. Personal highlights were ‘We are Rockstars’, ‘Epic Last Song’ and ‘Dawn of the Dead’ – and yes, I know, yawn, these are last 3 singles (the latter reaching the heady heights of #41 in the charts – oooo, nearly!) but the uninitiated only need listen to the stylistic differences between these 3 songs alone to realise that this band has a little bit of something for everyone to get their teeth into, yeah?