Does It Offend You? No, Not Really

[Music/Review] Generally when I am on the prowl for music, I get annoyed by the employees’ musical picks blasting on the record store’s stereo. It’s usually too damned loud (get off my lawn!). Of course, there’s an exception to every rule, as I discovered while browsing Graywhale recently. I found my feet tapping to an unfamiliar sound. I honestly don’t do this often but I asked the employee what he was playing. He informed me that Does It Offend You, Yeah? was rocking my socks off. I’m glad I heard their music first because that name has hipster bullshit written all over it.

I picked up a copy of You Have No Idea What You're Getting Yourself Into (which I didn’t, really), took it home and immediately started tracking down the band’s whereabouts tour wise. I found that they were located in the UK, but just for me, they decided to come to Urban Lounge on May 9. I am pretty selfish when it comes to new music discoveries and usually not hip enough to catch everything that has come my way in time, so selfishly, I always hope a band is under wraps before I catch them for the first time. After that they can have as many fans as they want.

Does It Offend You, Yeah? were on the bill with Laserfang and Yo! Majesty. Laserfang, I am ashamed to say, I have not seen enough since their bassist moved and they restructured the band. This is especially embarrassing because my roommate Shane “Awesome” Asbridge doubles as their frontman. They were so amazing and had all of the elements that I long for in rocking out: keyboards, amazing drums, and of course, the vocals. From now on, I’m going to make Shane serenade me to sleep every night.

Does It Offend You, Yeah? went on stage as scheduled, (what? weird!) but I had camera issues so I stepped outside to give old ma a call. My mommy fixes things: Shattered dreams, cameras, and boys teasing me. As she gave me detailed instructions I was confronted by two such boys asking me what I was taking photos for. I said an article, and kind of got mocked by them asking if the supposed article was my blog. I am sooo going to blog about them later.

The Urban Lounge is ideal for these types of shows, especially on a Friday night when the downtown bar is right on the cusp of being too packed, but not so badly that I want to cry and blog about it. The energy of the crowd was amazing, the sound of everything right on track, and I was still able to get my beers in a timely manner.

Urban eventually did grew to near capacity without me noticing (thanks beer) and everyone was crammed up to the front of the stage and en route had a run in with someone’s cigarette—my concert war wound for the night. It beat the usual—someone spilling a pitcher of beer on me.

Does It Offend You, Yeah? were actually much better live than on their album. They are an orgy of sound that compares to VHS or Beta, Bloc Party, Daft Punk, and a dash of LCD Soundsystem. If you like all that stuff, than you will love this band, if you don’t then fine don’t love them.

What made their set even more impressive is that this music is normally done by pre-recorded tracks, DJs and then some singing to top it off. These guys went all out organic to make the sounds they did and played all of their instruments without the bulking of pre-recordings to come to their rescue.

For their future albums, my constructive criticism: play zero slow songs so hard and so fast that yer fingers bleed. That is how I like them the best. And I will tell them that next time we are out shopping or having lunch.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to catch Yo! Majesty, I heard a lot of people were there to see them as well, (thanks beer AND Pina Coladas earlier) but in way sometimes when you go to a concert and you just saw something that is seemingly untopple, I just want to end scene and bask in what I just witnessed. So begins successfully my summer of oh so many concerts. (Dominique LaJeunesse)