Forget the Granville strip—You Say Party! We Say Die! brought the dance party to 12th Avenue in early October. The lengthy line for the late show may have looked like it was from the aforementioned culturally-deficient entertainment district, but this event had a charm Granville will never possess. Warming up an eager crowd, Gang Violence launched into a set of nervy dance-rock that was truly apt for the evening (a few audience members even thought the band was YSP!WSD!). Singer Sarah Cordingley brought just the right amount of menace to her vocals, and seemed noticeably pleased to actually “mean it” when comparing the audience to some of the band’s less stellar tour dates she told us, “You guys are awesome.”

Gang Violence may have got hands clapping and bodies moving, but it was You Say Party! We Say Die! that really worked the audience into a fervour. The group played the most danceable rock this side of Martha & the Muffins, with a seamless mixture of older songs and new material off their new album XXXX, and even some that was as-of-yet unreleased, but it was 2007’s Lose All Time that really shone. Drummer Devon Clifford commented, among other humourous repartees, that the audience members were “like rats trying to get off the Titanic” during crowd-pleaser “Opportunity,” and, indeed, that was how it looked. The front row of the crowd was crushed against the raised stage by the flailing bodies behind them, getting to the point where singer Becky Ninkovic was telling the audience to “back up” mid-song. But it was during the encore performances of “Like I Give a Care” and “The Gap (Between the Rich and the Poor)” when the crowd really exploded. The audience flooded the stage, dancing alongside Ninkovic and company with reckless abandon. At one point in the night Ninkovic told her audience that she wanted the room to “be filled with love,” and unlike anything on Granville, this room most certainly was. [ed. Do you not consider dryhumping to be love?]