Despite all she’s been through, Becky Ninkovic, the feisty lead singer for Vancity dance-punks You Say Party! We Say Die! remains hopeful for the future-and she has good reason to be. Even with the mixed bag of opportunities and setbacks that 2006 brought the quirky quintet (some metaphorical speed-bumps, roadblocks and hitchhikers picked up along the way) YSP!WSD! is thankfully still on the road to success.
Case in point: back in February, the group signed a record deal with Toronto’s coolest indie record label, Paper Bag. This move has undoubtedly helped raise the band’s already cresting profile and should give their brand-new record Lose All Time an industry kick-start and some cushy shelfspace at trendier record stores nationwide.
But there’s more to the story. YSP!WSD! busted onto the West Coast’s indie scene back in 2003, and 2004 saw the release of their debut LP, the catchy but rough-around-the-edges Hit the Floor. With a solid album filled with infectious, blistering, basement dance anthems, the band hit the road and found throngs of receptive fans, both at home and abroad. Taking their tour overseas to the U.K. and the European beer belt, YSP! won even more acclaim, and good press, which, by the time they arrived back in Canada, had bestowed upon them that often-fleeting, intangible stuff called “indie cred.”
It was at this point that the band was forced to make a difficult move. Drummer Bruce Dyck was really just a loaner from fellow Vancouver party-rockers Fun 100. Despite the international accolades YSP! was winning, the promise of more extensive tours in far-off lands made Fun 100 nervous. They wanted their drummer (and founding member) back for keeps.
“We were just borrowing Bruce from Fun 100 and our touring schedule was getting more and more hectic and taking him away from his band, so he decided to leave because he wanted to stick with Fun 100,” remembered Ninkovic, on the phone from her home in Vancouver.
To replace Dyck, the band approached their longtime mutual friend Devon Clifford. The problem with that was that Clifford, like Dyck, was already in another band, an angular post-punk outfit called Cadeaux. Like YSP! Cadeaux had recently released a great debut LP (2005’s Physical City) and toured Canada. Cadeaux couldn’t afford to lose their drummer anymore than Fun 100. But unlike Dyck, Clifford chose to join the party, and even convinced one of Cadeaux’s two lead vocalists, Dani Vachon, to jump ship and hop on the burgeoning YSP! bandwagon as their full-time manager.
This flurry of trading activity-more in line with the world of pro sports than indie rock-effectively kicked Cadeaux to the curb. While the disappointment amongst die-hard Cadeaux fans (this writer included!) was palpable, it was undeniable that YSP! had a good thing going.
“When it first happened we felt really bad,” admits Ninkovic, “but I think there were more reasons than just Devon leaving that would have caused the end of Cadeaux.”
Despite the potential rift that this incident might have caused, Ninkovic still speaks highly of Cadeaux. “They were my favourite Vancouver band, I felt really sad that they were going to end. I still really miss Cadeaux and they were one of the only bands that I would actually leave my house to go and see.”
With that chapter finally closed and Cadeaux’s catalogue wistfully relegated to the “buried treasure” category of Canadian indie rock, YSP! had to, well, party on.
The newly-cemented unit did that by launching into an extensive tour that helped fully integrate Clifford into the group, as well as having other positive effects on the band. “Since getting Devon I’ve felt like we’ve all improved musically and grown so much tighter as a musical unit,” cooed Ninkovic coolly.
The next step was recording their follow-up to Hit the Floor the freshly pressed Lose All Time.
“The new record was all written within the last year. A lot of my lyrics I wrote on the road while touring Hit the Floor,” remembered Ninkovic. “Whenever we had a chance between tours we were jamming out all the ideas for the new songs. The majority of it was finalized at the start of winter and then we went into the recording studio in January.”
“But on some level we’re always writing. I’m always writing my thoughts and feelings and words down and sometimes they just have a melody or a song of their own and sometimes I’m trying to find a melody to sing those words to. But it’s different all the time. Every song will have its own character and its own life to it.”
Her description is bang-on. While Lose All Time retains the frantic, bust-a-move energies of Hit the Floor, it boasts more nuanced songwriting and polished production work. “Opportunity” knocks like a fiery, three-way car crash between Metric, Bloc Party and “Jerk it Out” by Caesars, while “Monster” features a sugar-coated vocal hook worthy of Broken Social Scene and guitar and drum work that calls to mind the best of Montreal’s Kiss Me Deadly. “Like I Care” pays posthumous homage to the driving and angular affinities of Cadeaux-at times it sounds like they could break into a cover of “Things That I Know”-and then twists into the Karen O-inspired refrain with Ninkovic chanting, “On your own, you’re all right.”
But, in an almost Faustian tradeoff, their immaculate recording may have required the tarnishing of another, much more personal record.
“It was an awful day,” Ninkovic said, hesitantly recalling their attempt in late 2006 to enter the United States for a number of big tour dates with Detroit’s Thunderbirds Are Now!
“We were all so exhausted because we had been constantly touring and we had applied for visas for the States, and been denied, but then re-applied and were just waiting for those to go through,” she remembered. A little white lie would be required to enter the United States without visas and return with whatever money they had agreed to play for. Nearing the checkpoint they hatched a plan: “We had a radio session booked in L.A., so we thought we would try to get across the border by just saying we were going to do that, and leave out the fact that we had a whole tour of shows booked.”
The plan backfired. Upon searching their van a U.S. customs official turned up a copy of the band’s tour itinerary, with every (illegal) performance’s details listed extensively in back and white.
And the band wasn’t simply turned away. This is after all, a post-9/11 world, and in America, these illegit post-punks didn’t stand a chance.
Stephen O’Shea, the band’s bass player, was removed from the vehicle, and spirited away. According to Ninkovic, “They interrogated him for almost four hours in a room by himself. We had no idea what they were doing to him in there, it was awful. They had all this information that they didn’t let him know they had, so he was just trying to keep our story straight, and he got caught lying and charged with fraud, and it’s just awful cause he’s not a liar. He’s a really good boy.”
O’Shea was released and told not to return to The United States for five years. If he does, he’ll be arrested. Everyone else in the band received a stern warning, except for Ninkovic, who holds American citizenship.
So while American fans of You Say Party! We Say Die! will have to wait until 2011 to see the band play again, the rest of the world is their oyster. Canada will be seeing tons of YSP! action as the band makes its way cross-county as part of Exclaim’s Spring Fling tour, which also features Champion, Chromeo, and Malajube. The band also plans to release a b-side titled “Midnight Snake” and possibly tour Japan (with ex-drummer Dyck rumoured to be their roadie!).
So, despite all the headaches and bad days, things are still looking up for the band. A stellar album, and a great new record label are the happy endings YSP! deserves after a complicated year of highs and lows. Ninkovic sums up the band’s future in two words: “we’re excited.”
And, as long as you live outside the U.S., you should be, too.
The Exclaim Spring Fling rolls into the Phoenix this Wednesday, featuring performances by You Say Party! We Say Die!, Chromeo, Champion, and Malajube.
