Does It Offend You, Yeah? - You Have No Idea What You’re Getting Yourself Into

DOES IT OFFEND YOU, YEAH?
You Have No Idea What You’re Getting Yourself Into
The scenesters with the worst name ever have been causing quite a buzz in their native England recently, meaning their debut album arrives to an equal amount of excitement and apprehension. Will this be yet another band that fails to live up to the hype that the British music press dispenses so cheaply?

After the instrumental electronica of opener Battle Royale starts things off pleasingly enough, the brilliantly hectic With a Heavy Heart (I Regret to Inform You) kicks in, sounding like Death From Above wrestling with Klaxons. Elsewhere, Attack of the 60 Foot Lesbian Octopus is two-minutes of pure surf-punk insanity. Yet stirring moments like these are counterbalanced by weaker efforts like Weird Science, which sounds like something Daft Punk threw away, and the vacuous Let’s Make Out. Meanwhile, the banging We Are Rock Stars is awesome but for the annoying vocoder vocals, which crop up all too often throughout the album.

Ultimately the band seems to be torn between dance and indie. Largely, the album offers chunky dance tracks reminiscent of Justice, yet tunes like Dawn of the Dead and Epic Last Song weirdly land closer to The Rakes or Bloc Party, making them incongruous with what surrounds them.

Although such dichotomy makes You Have No Idea… something of a hotchpotch, there are interesting and exciting moments here and the sheer energy on display suggests that, when the band inevitably tours these shores in the near future, seeing them live will be an absolute fucking riot.