Dananananaykroyd – 'Hey Everybody' review
Dananananaykroyd’s first EP was such a concentrated and concise blast of attention-deficit pop that it became difficult to imagine the group in any dose other than the short and sharp: its success lay in its boundless, feral energy – qualities that stun in flurries but which quickly become wearing.
That said, this album starts magnificently. A 90-second blast of country-fried post-punk collides with the frenetic first song proper, and it’s a hard listener who wouldn’t crack a smile when the entire band begin chanting their name in unison (it’s also a useful pronunciation guide for those of us who’ve been calling them “Danawhatever” for the last year). This rattles straight into their brilliant minisymphony The Greater Than Symbol & The Hash and then into Black Wax, a straight-up pop song recalling the best bits of Pavement and Idlewild with a coda to rival Arcade Fire’s sense of singalong.
But that’s more or less it. Save for the gloriously inventive 1993, which begins like a heavier XTC and mutates into Mogwai-with-singing for the outro, there’s little that grabs attention and a lot that feels like a band going through the motions.
At its best, Hey Everybody delivers a rare level of life-affirming energy and a force of personality that propels you through the songs with wide-eyed excitement. But unfortunately there’s not enough in the tank to sustain itself consistently – releasing just half of this album would’ve made it doubly good.
7/10
