If you’ve ever had a friend grab you by the collar and scream into your face, “Let’s have it large!” you’ve probably got a grasp on Does It Offend You, Yeah? Described as electro-punk, moonage-funk and disco-spunk, these lads from old Blighty subscribe to a more ambiguous music vision.
“We got known for the electro thing, which is funny to us because it was from like two weeks that we were into electro,” laughs vocalist and bassist James Rushent. “We went to a nightclub and they were playing loads of electro stuff and me and Dan were like hey, let’s write songs like this. And that was it,” he tells me with a quiet laugh. “Then that stuff got picked up on and everybody was like oh, you’re going to make an electro album. We were actually sort of bored by [of it] then, we’ve been listening to lots of sort of ‘80s music, so we wrote a couple of ‘80s tracks.
“We’re really big Talking Heads fans. When we were doing the album we sat down and discussed how do we want the band to be – what do we want it to become and stuff. One of the main things was that we wanted to get into a Talking Heads habit. You know, you couldn’t say what the Talking Heads were, they were just Talking Heads.
“They could do one album that sounded one way and another album that sounded another way. All the tracks sounded different. I mean there was a thread running through it, but part of it’s charm was that you didn’t know what you were going to get out of them. With this album I think we’ve really cleared the slate with regards to that. No one can turn around and say to us, ‘the Does It Offend You album, it’s going to sound like this.’
“Before the album came out we were getting a lot of like, ‘Yeah, it’s going to be an electro album.’ Yeah, there’s an electro track on there, but at the same time we sort of tried to divide it up a bit. So it’s like, ‘who knows what the next Does It Offend You album’s gonna sound like, they write whatever the fuck they want!’”
I ask him about the name, which is quite possible one of the best going around at the moment. “It was a quote out of The Office. We we were setting up our MySpace account, and we needed a name. So we just put on the TV and the first thing that was said was Ricky Gervais [saying], ‘Does it offend you, yeah? My drinking.’ And that’s how it happened.
“It’s funny – some people thought we were trying to say something with the name; trying to be outrageous or something. We were like, no, we just needed a name, and we were too lazy to think of one so we just ripped it off the TV. No thought went into it at all.”
Despite their reputation as a live act of unbridled enthusiasm, often stage diving and smashing guitars when on stage, James is at heart a family man. “When I’m off tour I see my wife and my daughter. At the same time when I go out I like to have a good time, but when I’m at home I’m at home. I hardly get to see my daughter now. So when I’m back it’s like quality time, just take her out and do things. She’s nearly two which is great. I’m the man to her, if she remembers who I am, that is,” he laughs. “It usually takes like a day when I get back off tour when she looks at me quite oddly, but then a day later she’s like, ‘Oh yeah, it’s that dude.’”
Eager for some excess, I press him about tour stories and who’s the wild child in the band. “Morgan’s woken up in LA on the street before with no idea where he was. We had to do this TV thing, and we showed up at this station and we were like, ‘Where the hell’s Morgan?’ Then at like three in the afternoon, our tour manager got this call: Morgan’s been out on the street tonight, he’s totally lost and we’ve got to pick him up.
“Everyone [in the band] goes through stages I think. I go through stages [where] I’ll drink five shows in a row, then I’m dead. I can’t move for a week and I feel really ill for ages. It’s very rare that we all hit our stride of drinking at the same time. I think it’s only happened twice – and that’s when it got really messy. That’s when the tour manager cracks it.”
Does It Offend You, Yeah? will be playing their only Australian sideshow at The Oxford Art Factory on Wednesday 1 October. This weekend, they’ll play the final two Parklife dates in Brisbane and Sydney.
