The urban post-punk scene, rife with hipsters and scenesters, ready to rock your world with sharp chops and well...sharp chops, rarely diverts from its regimentally processed music formula - Gang of Four heavy dual guitar, Talking Heads funky bass, and quick tempo, unpracticed Ramones percussion - only to ultimately summon party hearty youngsters into dance clubs and bars, asserting their new music manifesto of a new world order of skinny tie, androgynous twenty-somethings. The aptly titled YSP! WSD!’s Lose All Time, though suckled on the usual suspects, prefers a more jagged, rawer power. Like Rogers Sisters, The Rapture, and !!!, they streamline their music with fierce rhythm, but layer it with unworldly beats and melodies that pontificate the new dance-punk style. Driven more by the raw tones and raucous shamble of Yeah Yeah Yeah’s than textbook cord changes and pitch perfect melodies, YSP! WSD! give their music a bit of the soul missing in much of modern club-happy music. As Becky Ninkovic sings “Shut out the world! Shut it out! Shut it out!” in “Like I Give a Care,” it may seem like the same old angst-riddled chick rock. But like Karen O, I think she’d rather spit beer in your face than tear apart her diary and throw it your face.
--Wes Barker
