Tuesday 23/10/07 Los Campesinos!, You Say Party! We Say Die! @ ULU, London

It’s all eyes on Becky Ninkovic, the engaging front woman of Vancouver’s You Say Party! We Say Die! When she’s not on stage throwing shapes with wild abandon she’s roaming the crowd, filtering through the group of teenage boys gathered in front of the stage to seek those that seemingly have every lyric she sings memorised. Her vocals soar and yelp, bristling over the dirty bass, growling guitar and creeping keyboard.  he band storm through their exhilarating set of dance punk that takes in new single ‘Like I Give A Care’ and old favourite ‘He! She! You! Me! They! We! Us! OK!’. Brilliant stuff!

Los Campesinos! take to the stage with the energetic and delightfully ramshackle ‘Broken Heartbeats Sound Like Breakbeats’. There’s this amazing bit where it slows down at the end and the twee intro of ‘Don’t Tell Me To Do The Math(s)’ quietly starts up, before you know it the whole crowd is punching their fists and shouting “Just don’t read Jane Eyre!” It’s a good start to an excellent set. The venue fills with handclaps for ‘It Started With A Mixx’ and ‘You! Me! Dancing!’ has the audience singing along with the guitar riff and a bit of a stage invasion going on. Meanwhile a couple of lesser known tracks played mid set bode well for what we can expect from the album. The first, “a ballad about a girl at a festival” is great (and not just because it has lyrics that reference a song by The Blow, honest) whilst ‘We Exhale And Roll Our Eyes In Unison’ might just be the best song they’ve written (our favourite LC! song changes often but for now we really love this one).

The band close their set with ‘Sweet Dreams Sweet Cheeks’ and prove that synchronised dance moves are only ever a good thing, ensuring maximum fun for the “one blink for yes/two blinks for no…” climax.