You Say Party Say Wolf Wolf

Vancouver dance punks You Say Party! We Say Die! have come a long way since they formed four years ago. While the band used to offer to play anywhere just to get a gig, they've now toured the U.S., Europe, China and Japan and are about to embark on a massive Canadian tour in support of the digitally released Remik's Cube. ChartAttack caught up with the quintet in Toronto before they flew back home to rest up for the tour.

ChartAttack: So you used to be known as the band that would "play anything, anywhere, anytime."
Becky Ninkovic: We were liars. We lied. Well, we didn't realize we were lying at the time. We really believed in the cause, and then when we started saying yes to everything, and realizing how much that can suck sometimes, we pulled back. We pulled out.
Devon Clifford: Yeah, we don't want no babies.

You guys have played in some unusual places. What's your favourite?
Derek Adam: Devon's kitchen.
DC: Yeah, that one was pretty good, actually.
BN: That was a good show.
DC: Madison Square Garden was cool… Oh wait, no, that was… not us.
Krista Loewen: We played in a church service one time.
BN: It was during the offering.

Did you play church music, or did you play your own music?
BN: We played "The Gap (Between The Rich And The Poor)" while they were handing around the offering.

And what was the reaction?
KL: They were down with it.
BN: It was a pretty open and out-there church, so...
DA: I wish there was video footage of that.
BN: I'm glad there wasn't. I was wearing a terrible sweater that day.
DC: But we were in church though, and that was a church sweater.

You launched a YouTube channel in January. What inspired that?
Stephen O'Shea: Derek used to make really funny videos. And he actually has his own YouTube channel. He has control of that, and I was so jealous, and I had a bunch of other videos lying around of all of us. So I created it and threw more videos to complement all of Derek's much funnier videos. We all have digital cameras, so whenever we're on the road… we put our videos on as it goes. It's a chance to find out a bit more about us. You only ever get to see us on stage or hear about us in interviews. You can experience our real personalities on that channel.
BN: We're just a ray of sunshine. We just want to share ourselves with the world.
SO: We were also inspired by the R. Kelly videos on YouTube.
KL: Real talk.

On your website, it says that you are the "new wave of new wave." Do you think that's an apt description of your sound?
SO: We're a new wave band.
DA: I thought we were post/past/pre-future?
BN: Which is now.
DA: Yeah, current rock.
KL: General rock.

I read a lot of "dance punk."
BN: Basically.

Are you guys cool with that?
DC: Dan's cool, and I like all of his punk music. Dan's punk is totally cool.
BN: I just want to say that I don't want to be limited by labels. But the world needs labels. They ask for them all the time. They want a label. They want to have something so they can say, "Yes, this is who you are and what you are, and now I'm going to put you in this little limited space of mine that I've created for you."
DC: That even applies to food at supermarkets and stuff.
BN: Yeah, packaging, man! They just want to package us!
DC: It's a total universal thing. Like, think about even just the universe — that's labeling. Giving it a name is labeling it.
BN: Can you really give the universe a name?
DC: Yeah, "the universe."
DA: I like Agnes. I think Agnes would be a good word for the universe.

Speaking of names, Panic At The Disco recently dropped their exclamation point. Would you guys ever drop your exclamation points?
SO: I don't think you could frame our two-sentence band name without the two exclamation points. If they were periods, if they were semi-colons… We're big about punctuation. It couldn't be question marks. We couldn't be You Say Party? We Say Die?
BN: And we considered that.
SO: We're not afraid that just because a trend ends, just because the exclamation point thing is "done," the "wolf" thing is now done, there will be something else…
DC: Nobody told me. I was just going to start a new band called Wolf Wolf!