Dananananaykroyd - Hey Everyone! (Best Before 2009)

This is a labyrinthian powerhouse of a release from Glasweigan sextet Dananananaykroyd. Their wit and showmanship is apparent in their name and two-drummer-bashing thunder-beats. Underneath all that screaming and yelping is a sense of humour that lightens the meticulously noisy 12 songs that make up this release. Muscular and pig-headed, they pound your solar plexus with spidery guitars, strained shouts and distinctive stop-start song mutations that bulk up an impressively loud sound. It’s far from contrived, if anything it’s utterly passionate and heartfelt and earnest with a tongue in cheek slant, all at once.

The songs leap out at you from the get-go with ‘Watch This’s screaming banter and cheeky ‘Hiya! Hiya What’s this?’ squeals. And once it’s gone, it carries on like a juggernaut veering towards the edge, all pounding through the fog of lo-fi with a determined clarity and jagged guitar swells. ‘The Greater Than Symbol and The Hash’, ‘Pink Sabbath’, ‘Totally Bone’, ‘Some Dresses’ have all cropped up on singles and EPs through the last year but all sound so fresh integrated with album hits and quieter calmer moments, like the fidgety ‘Black Wax’ which is as angular and yelpy as they get. The noise and scattershot harmonies never detract by the pure sense of melody the band possess, all harmoniously working hard to create a thorough and layered sound that never errs on the side of simplistic or typical; it’s always nervy, stop-starty and deliriously tuneful and hopeful. It’s not quiet or calm for long, as the fiercely manic triptych of ‘Totally Bone’, ‘Pink Sabbath’ and ‘Infinity Milk’ bring the noise back to the furore. ‘Hey James’ seems to be seven songs in one with its fist-pumping melody, dark title-whispering coda and shouty chorus. This is unifying music, music to join a cult for, and with that simple declaration of ‘Hey Everyone!’ the bands’ arrival has been announced.

‘Hey Everyone!’ (exclamation mark necessary) is an unforgettable monolith of a debut, simply put, awesome- always moving forward, always getting louder, always keeping you entertained and never taking itself too seriously. Hooray for a band that sounds like its members are having fun playing together, melding scream, metal, punk funk and good ol workhard indie into a multicultural melting pot of important guitar noise. In a slew of great 2009 albums, this’ll stand up by years’ end as one of the best debuts (they’ll be duking it out with Micachu for that honour) and definitely one of its mostly durable and unforgettable. Who ya gonna call?

Myspazz