Shiny Toy Guns / Does It Offend You Yeah? - Club Academy Manchester - 10.7.07

The battle lines are drawn from the outset. The dayglo kids down the front who before the bands have even started are a pogoing frenzy and then the mums and dads at the back. For the first time in years the generation gap is in full effect as new rave and electro punk is the point where parents stop trying to get down with the kids by leaving Basement Jaxx and Groove Armada records on the coffee table and finally admit they just don't get it.

Does It Offend You Yeah? may be the support band but it wont be long before the line up is reversed. Just last month they managed to rock 700 people along with Hadouken upstairs at Academy 2 and many of their army are here tonight. Mixing the excitement of say Test Icicles along with tunes that Klaxons try to write they're an unstoppable bundle of energy for a far too brief 20 minutes. Remixes of Bloc Party and The Raconteurs may have got your attention but its their own material tonight which rocks the party with "We Are Rockstars" all Chemical Brothers meets Daft Punk squelches, vocodered vocals and 4 to the floor beats. Previous single "Weird Science" sounds like some twisted kids TV theme tune mashed up on the extra-curricular with Richard Bacon. Once you see Does It Offend You Yeah? your perception on the indie-dance scene will be forever changed

Shiny Toy Guns despite the hype are the worst elements of LA you could ever imagine. Glossy, vacuous and ultimately as pointless as an episode of Dawsons Creak. Its almost as if the record label looked at the career of underground pop band the Modern and tried to recreate it with a hint of emotronica and it fails apart from the 1st 20 seconds of "Le Disko" which is what they should have repeated for their 30 minute set. "You Are The One" and "Don't Cry Out" are blander than Fall Out Boy and it doesn't help that tonight the smoke machine is on overdrive and little can be seen of the band for most of the show. Expect Shiny Toy Guns to be massive for all the wrong reasons

After an initial mind-blowing start with Does It Offend You Yeah? we're left tired and withdrawn. Uppers and downers in the space of 2 hours surely aint good for you

Alex McCann
 

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