Does It Offend You, Yeah?

Fri 21st Aug, 2009 in Features

Does It Offend You, Yeah? have played everything from Lollapalooza to Glastonbury and toured with everyone from The Prodigy to Bloc Party. Sex, drugs, and most certainly rock and roll should be at their finger tips. But when FasterLouder called synth player Dan Coop at his Reading home, he wasn’t acting like a rockstar; he was having a cup of tea. “Well actually, it’s not even tea. All I could find was… What is this? Indian tonic water? I’m drinking that? Well that’s all I’ve got in the house today. Indian water.”

Coop will soon be getting used to the touring tirade of eating the many weird and wonderful things that can be jammed into a pita bread or poured into a polystyrene cup. DIOYY? are days away from embarking on their three-month world tour, hopefully coinciding the trip’s end with the release of their second studio album in late October.

Coop promises that the new album, with a working title of Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn You, will be less “schizophrenic” than their 2006 debut, You Have No Idea What You’re Getting Yourself Into. “Soon, we can give you a bit of an idea, and not be such a mysterious arseholes about it.”

Last time DIOYY? grazed our shores with their Justice/Daft Punk-esque acid-dance, lead singer James Rushent was plastered – and not the drunk kind. After a mistimed stage dive at one of their notoriously high-energy shows in Hollywood, Rushent was dashed off to hospital with a broken leg. But not before he completed his encore. And the tour.

Apparently this wasn’t rock and roll enough for one Sydney reviewer says Coop who has a few bones to pick. “Normally do this, but I read a live review of one of the last gigs that we did in Sydney, and someone said, ‘I thought that someone said that they were supposed to be really high energy. But their lead singer, James Rushent, just sat down for most of the gig’.” Coop wasn’t at all impressed, “He’s got a fucking broken leg you twat!! What kind of music journalist are you??”

But this is but a blip on DIOYY?’s opinion of Australia. Coop almost gets complimentary confiding that “if I had a chance, I’d live in Australia. I mean, if you dragged it a bit closer to the rest of the world, I’d be all up for it. It’s like 50% England, 50% Japan… I don’t know what you’ve done out there, but it’s just a bit strange. I like it.”

It’s surprising to hear that the band even had time to form an opinion of our Great Southern Land in 2008. Coop even admits that last time, the sightseeing went as far as getting to see “a really nice hotel, then a park, then maybe a bar, and then an airport, and then the same again six times in a row.”

Their aspirations this time around are going so much further than Holiday Inn lobbies though. They want to reach that pinnacle point that an English artist can achieve: a guest slot on Neighbours. “If The Wombats can manage to get on Neighbours, then I want to,” sniggers Coop smugly.

But first, they have to get into the country. Known for their somewhat crazed onstage antics, which seem to break just as many bones as instruments, they aren’t exactly the ideal candidates for a working visa. After watching Border Patrol Coop seems a little worried admitting that “They seem pretty hardcore… I’d actually like to say ‘no comment’ otherwise they might not let us in the country! But we’ll be fine. Just let us in. It’ll be great.”

Catch Does It Offend You, Yeah? in September playing in Perth on the 5th, Adelaide on the 8th, Melbourne on the 9th, Brisbane on the 10th and Sydney on the 11th before taking on the Coaster Festival on Saturday 12 September at the Gosford Showgrounds