No Offense Taken: An Interview With Does It Offend You, Yeah?

September 8, 2008 4:23 PM
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One of the most unique band names out right now; Does It Offend You, Yeah (DIOYY)? While their name was taken from an episode of The Office, the English version, the British quartet are now working on their malleable sound. Depending on what track you listen to off of their debut album, You Have No Idea What You're Getting Yourself Into, they can either come off as a ballsy electro outfit (We Are Rockstars), or a lovable 80s troupe (Being Bad Feels Pretty Good). Where most bands choose to have consistent tracks that tend to bore the modern day music fan, DIOYY opts for the 'let's see what we're into next,' approach.

CoolJunkie recently caught up with Does It Offend You Yeah? frontman, James Rushent, and talked about the unique approach to their debut album, how Britney's Toxic made an impact on him and what everyone can look forward to on their next effort.

CoolJunkie: Let’s talk about what you’ve been up to lately. How’s that schedule been?

James Rushent: Well, we just toured with Bloc Party in the states and then we did Lollapalooza and then went over to Japan. Tomorrow we do our hometown festival and then we’re back your way to the states.

CJ: So a lot of touring then?

James Rushent: Yeah, a lot of touring.

CJ: How do you like the American festivals compared to those in the U.K.?

James Rushent: I’d say the only difference is that in Europe, at the moment, they’re really clamping down on noise limits. They’re starting to get a bit harsh, actually. It’s starting to get to the point where, I mean I remember last year, at a Reading Festival, watching Slayer down in the front and being able to talk to people. That was a bit, like, “Oh hold on a minute,” you know? What’s going on? But in America it’s still very much sort of “have it as loud as you want” sort of thing.

CJ: Let’s talk about your album for a little bit. What was going through your head when you guys were going into the studio initially? Did you have a concept in mind?

James Rushent: Yeah, the first tracks we did, like Battle Royale and We Are Rockstars, were very electro-driven records. We sort of purely did that because that’s what we were interested in that weekend. We’re not hard electro fans or anything, but we were just into that sort of stuff for that period of time. And then we got signed, and we went away for a while and we tried to write a pure electro album and we couldn’t, we were finding it very difficult because we were just sort of trying to rehash old tracks and it wasn’t really working out so we decided that we should just be as honest as we can. So if we wake up one day and decide we feel like we wanted to write an 80s pop tune, then let’s just write an 80s pop tune, you know? Let’s not try and make it electro in any way, let’s just write what comes out. So, we just decided to be as honest as we could be with ourselves and whatever came out on any given day was recorded.

CJ: Were all you guys pleased with the end product?

James Rushent: I don’t know, I mean, it’s our first album and looking at it now and sort of knowing what we know now, and I’ve been studying a lot of music theory stuff and things like that, I think it’s quite a bit naïve but at the same time that’s the charm about it. That’s the charm I get off it, it’s quite a naïve album. It’s just some guys going, “Let’s just put something down.” I think we’ve got better albums to come, but it’s sort of one of those soft-spot albums. I have a soft spot for it because it’s totally before anything. It’s before touring, it’s before we ever got really involved in the music business.

CJ: Was it almost like an intense learning experience for you?

James Rushent: Oh yeah, totally! Without a doubt, totally. You know, we went through so many phases with that record. I mean I remember literally just giving up at quite a few points and just, going on about, “Do we really have to do this?” But there were points where we were really charged up. There has always been a soft spot for that record, definitely.

CJ: Do your musical influences vary amongst the band?

James Rushent: Oh yeah, completely.

CJ: What were you guys into at the time?

James Rushent: I don’t think there’s one member of the band that didn’t affect it. It’s a very wishy-washy thing to say, but if I hear a track I don’t like, that isn’t necessarily my kind of thing, I can still recognize that it’s good. I remember when Toxic came out, that blew me away. It was a Britney Spears record, but still, I was like, “That’s a really good record.”

CJ: So you guys are very open-minded to everything that’s out there?

James Rushent: Yeah totally, I think you have to be nowadays. You can’t be a bigot. If you’re a bigot, then it’s like you’re stuck. We’re not ashamed to do that as well, we’re not ashamed to say, “One day we do this track, one day we do another track.” I think a lot of bands are sort of like, “Oh we have our sound.” Well good for you. We’re not like that, we don’t think like that. We just go off what we’re into.

CJ: Now you guys have some really interesting song names, how do those come about?

James Rushent: That was sort of what the tracks sounded like. There’s a certain word we use in the title that comes from a sound in the track, like a burp. A burp sounds like a burp, you know what I mean? That’s sort of how we went after it. Like Attack of the 60 ft Octopus, when we finished that track it sounded like a 50s B-movie, like B52s sort of style and we were like, it sounds like a B-movie. Let’s call it something that a B-movie would be called, like Attack of the 60 ft Lesbian Octopus. It fits the track. And then Battle Royale, we called it Battle Royale obviously because there’s loads of battle royale samples in it. It was just what the track sort of felt like, what fitted it. That’s really how they came about.

CJ: So you guys recently started hitting up the US with dates and stuff. Do you feel like you’ve had your “holy shit” moment over here yet?

James Rushent: No, not at all. We try to really not think like that. We try to keep it so we go on and we do our show. We don’t really read the music press, we don’t do any of that. I think it’s a very dangerous thing if you start believing your own hype. If you feel like you’re doing really well but you start to wrestle your own rules, I think that’s a dangerous thing to do because I’ve met loads of bands that aren’t doing that great but yet they’re walking around like they think they’re gods. It’s just like, “No man you can always get better.” I mean don’t get me wrong, when we’re playing for a big audience and everyone goes nuts, it’s not like we don’t appreciate it. But at the same time, it’s like, “Right, let’s make sure the next show is even better,” and that’s sort of how we go about things.

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