animal rights

It's customary to say of new artists that their music is catchy, and often it is, but Say Yes Dog's is really catchy. In fact, it has a sort of sing-song quality that would lend itself well to being taught to kids. And we don't mean "kids" in the punk vernacular sense of "ver kids on the street" - teenagers and delinquent adolescents in general - but kids at infants schools. You can imagine their songs being accompanied by Day-Glo cuddly furry cartoon animals doing Day-Glo cuddly furry cartoon animal dances. Either that or being used as the theme tune to a TV show featuring same, a modern-day Rainbow for juvenile clubbers.

Because every one of their infectious ditties comes with a 4/4 beat or synthpop pulse. Say Yes Dog's music isn't just child-friendly, it's club-friendly. It's music for Day-Glo cuddly furry cartoon animals to perform choreographed routines in a discotheque for the under-fives. And yet even at its most infectious and insistent it somehow sounds downbeat, sad. This has a lot to do with the singer's dry, doleful delivery, and it helps create a mood, a tone, that can perhaps best be described as forlorn funk or wistful disco. And this in turn explains the numerous comparisons that have been made between Say Yes Dog - two Berliners and a Luxembourger based in the Hague - and Hot Chip.