Album review: Dance Gavin Dance: 'Happiness'

DANCE GAVIN DANCE: 'Happiness' (Rise)

Nowadays, it seems that every two-bit scenester with a FSAS T-shirt and a few star tattoos wants to be in a post-hardcore band. Look around, everybody's doing it: from Saosin to Silverstein, A Day to Remember to Atreyu, the landscape's littered with coiffured noisenik groups, usually with about seventy-five vocalists, half of whom get paid to growl incoherently into their microphones while the others try to claw together some sort of melody over the two-chord trudge of the music.

Fortunately, despite being tagged with the ‘post-hardcore’ label, there's a lot more to Dance Gavin Dance than meets the eye. Far from exhibiting the usual limitations of the genre, 'Happiness' is as colourful a palette of audible delights as you could possibly hope for, veering schizophrenically around a series of equally delectable sounds. The band experiment with a range of unusual song structures and it works wonders: 'Carl Barker' changes pace with all the gusto of a System of a Down album, making it thrillingly unpredictable, while 'Don't Tell Dave' manages to channel the spirits of both Head Automatica and Refused simultaneously, producing an irresistibly funky hybridisation of hardcore and dance. And then there’s the sultry swing of ‘Strawberry Swisher Part 1’, which is so damn sexy it’s practically criminal.

When they stop being mischievous and get down to brass tacks, proudly displaying their rougher edges, things are equally as sophisticated. The archaic ear-batterings offered by ‘Self-Trepanation’ and ‘NASA’ are fuelled by the kind of extravagant riffery that’s usually the preserve of the world’s most experienced metal acts. The vocals are so much more than your average round of ‘scream vs. sing’ too: Jonathan’s growls are used only sparingly and are never allowed to overshadow Kurt’s melodies, so instead of seeming like a fight to be heard, they work in tandem, complementing one another.

Dance Gavin Dance’s saving grace is the depth of their talent. In a scene that’s awash with bandwagon jumpers who think the ability to tear apart their vocal chords, and their guitar strings, is all they need to ‘make it big’, it’s refreshing to see a group who are passionate enough about what they do to be willing to rip up the rulebook and start again. ‘Happiness’ is a playfully experimental piece of work that is as memorable as it is thrilling, and that, my friends, is something we could do with a whole lot more of. (8/10)