Band ”“ Dananananaykroyd
Album ”“ Hey Everyone
Label ”“ Best Before Records
Release date ”“ early April?
Sounds like ”“ Rayayayayayay Stantz and the Busters of Ghosts.

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There’s a good chance you’re either dead, a humourless dullard or anti-Scottish if you can’t find anything to like about ‘Hey Everyone.’ Even the most tragically dejected, emotionally traumatized misanthrope will be able to find something to smile about on Dananananaykroyd’s debut. This could be any manner of things, ranging from the band chanting their name, like some football anthem over ‘Watch This!’ to the bit where the drums erupt into overdrive on ‘Pink Sabbath’ to the crushing breakdown on ‘The Greater Than Symbol and the Hash’.

It’s a pure endorphin rush of what I can only describe as the happiest collection of songs ever. The insane exuberance that this Scottish-sextet radiate is seriously infectious ”“ whether it would crack a smile across the face of serial-miserabilist, Jack Dee on the other-hand, I’m unsure. There’s so much good feeling in this release, I can feel my teeth coming loose from the all the sugar and mouth-rotting glee they’ve poured into ‘Hey Everyone.’ This isn’t twee-contentment though; Dananananaykroyd are too heavy; too riff-based to slot into the bracket of xylophone tinkering and songs about Calvin Johnson ”“ it’s more a jubilant exhilaration of rock ‘n roll destruction and face-punching excellence.

During the beginning of third track, ‘The Greater Than Symbol and the Hash’ – your arms should be following this pattern: simultaneously raised high in the air, before being brought back down hard on an imaginary set of skins. If not, you should at least be clapping along. As the drums build up on the 1.17 mark, you just know something special is going to surface and it does in the force of a Mr Tasty ice cream truck, crushing through the soundwaves with a sickly sweet, but delightfully rambunctious quality.

This is still, and will perhaps be my favourite track of theirs; mainly because it was the first one I heard (then with original singer Giles) but former drummer Calum seems to bring new life to the song, as does the album re-recording; which seems to have bee dipped in a thick layer of guttural sludge and furious conflict at the 3 minute mark. Juxtaposing such a noisy onslaught alongside ‘Black Wax’ is to me, a cracking idea. It emphasises the change in Dananananaykroyd’s sound, from the face-melting riffs, to the almost pop-rock glow, this single radiates. Drummer John Baillie Jnr’s vocals add a wonderfully camp-sounding support to Calum’s slurred punk screech ”“ especially at the songs climax, as both attempt to out shout each other over the steadily rising drumbeats and scrawling riffs.

It’s picking out the best moments though that really make ‘Hey Everyone’ truly standout, and it’s littered with them. The part in ‘Totally Bone’ for example, where the music stops and Calum screams “WE BE TOTALLY BONE!” at the top of his lungs, followed by THAT bit, which you will know when you hear (okay, for those unsure, 3.30 ”“ the drums making that shuddering break, then slamming back in like a Mike Tyson uppercut.) The entire 3 minutes and 12 seconds of ‘Pink Sabbath’ and its scatter-gun of frivolity and outrageous punk rock superiority. The drumming once again plays an integral part, backboning the entire track under its vast weight of tribal beats and almost math-rock sporadic flourishes. It’s easily something that a hundred Epitaph bands wish they’d written and has ‘ANTHEM’ written all over it in massive, 50ft high pink letters.

One thing Dananananaykroyd manage extremely well, is switching between their rollicking assault to their slow, ‘dredging-the-lake’ rumble of noise in a way that both bleed into one another without the listener realising there’s been a change in pace. If anything, it commands their head jerks back and forth more, whilst screaming their lungs red raw alongside the lyrical cascade. Speaking of cascades, the tumbling clamour in the middle of ‘Some Dresses’, is the sound of several instruments being dismantled and dropped down a flight of stairs in a scrawling mangle of feedback that acts as a surprising but not unwanted interval between the two different sides of this shout-a-long feel-good fest. More bands should have a gap of sound like this in their songs ”“ it’s as if they’ve all come in from a night out drinking and attempted to each play a different song and then fallen over in a confused scribble of vomit and broken guitar strings.

‘1993’ and ‘Hey James’ follow in a similar fashion; a headstrong rush of scrambling, flailing sounds, content to trip each other up as they eagerly race towards the finish, whilst the clannish-part instrumental-part prog rampage of ‘Song One Puzzle’ ends proceedings in a wall of squealing feedback.

What more is there to say? ‘Hey Everyone’ is quite simply an anthemic head-rush of good vibrations, high-fives and stage dives. Like a Scottish Andrew W.K. fronting the Blood Brothers, with subtle party references – a cracking debut, brimming with positivity.

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Links

Dananananaykroyd
Myspace
Last FM
Label

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By Ross Macdonald

Lizard Hips

Junior Vice President of Keep It Fast. In other news: I work in social media, talk about dinosaurs, run a book club and have amazing facial hair. I am also a male man who is still not dead.

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