Does It Offend You, Yeah? – You Have No Idea What You’re Getting Into Review

25 April 2008, Allan @ 7:25 pm Does It Offend You, Yeah? I heard about a few times especially since I’ve been following the work of Sebastien Grainger and he lent his vocals to the track “Let’s Make Out” a track probably good for exactly that and then some.

The tracks they have available for streaming were pretty good actually. I ended seeing a review on Pitchfork (not deserving of a link here) giving them a 2.3 out of 10. I think after awhile when reading Pitchfork the albums that get praised are good and the ones that get their ass handed to them are usually well-off bands which don’t need a great review (e.g. a major label band) and they are making a statement at something that’s popular that shouldn’t be.

In this case it sounds like many reviewers hate the name Does It Offend You Yeah? and I must agree as it’s doesn’t seem to fit well in daily conversion and when you’re not exactly offensive or an asshole/prick/jerk it’s not very fitting. The title to the album of this album is also quite terrible and the first thing that comes to mind is “pretentious” before even picking up the album.

Bad band names and album titles aside, what it comes down to is the quality of the music. You can have band names such as The Throat Gaggers, The Horse Fuckers or The 2Girls1Cup Watchers (I don’t know if band names such as those exist but I’m not going to search for obvious reasons). As long as the music is good, I could care less and in this case Does It Offend You Yeah?’s You Have No Idea What You’re Getting Into is pretty darn good.

The album starts off with Battle Royale an instrumental track that seems to be homage to one of my favorite films of the same name. I think this is one of the better tracks, while there isn’t much vocally it’s quite enjoyable to listen to and you can see elements of houses or more specifically comparisons to Daft Punk.

Here’s a fan made video for Battle Royale – eat your heart out fans of the Power Rangers (who didn’t like them when you were 5?)

The next two tracks We Are Rockstars and With A Heavy Heart(I Regret To Inform You) are pretty awesome dance songs and all the way through you have some great dance tracks that would be awesome at the club. Other then the rather typical house music, you have these dance ballads that I guess you wouldn’t find after listening to the first few tracks and it’s more of a breath of fresh air as they are just adding vocals to a pretty solid set of music.

I guess see that their music isn’t exactly original but you can argue most pop music has been done before and it really just comes down to whether you enjoy it or not. Sure the music doesn’t offend me and I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting myself into but I am shaking my head here at how poorly critics found the album. If there’s any way of alienating music that I’m sure the masses would like that would be it by acting snobby and thinking that this music is “boring” and “unoriginal” and putting too much stock in a band name does much less for us as music fans more then anything.

Overall pretty darn good, an enjoyable record and I can’t say that about other albums that have been praised a great deal. My favorite tracks are Battle Royale, Being Bad Feels Pretty Good

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Due to this album being on a major label, I’m not exactly able to put up tracks to give you a correct idea of what you feel but enjoy these random tracks nonetheless.

AWmusic