Data.Select.Party – Hanging Out With Humans

Riff-heavy, anthemic, youthful and consistently fun, Hanging Out With Humans is one of those mini-album things, a release seemingly designed to frustrate those (most sad of) music reviewers who have spreadsheets on which they categorise records into "singles", "EPs" and "LPs"... ahem. Like such a record, the grammar pedant-baiting Data.Select.Party straddle two camps, and in the band's case it's perhaps the two genres of rock and electro-pop. Leaning only a little more heavily on guitars than they do on electronics, the band seem to made a record that is hewn from sheer party atmosphere. Whilst brief at 21 minutes and a mere six songs, this is a record that is nonetheless quite muscular and satisfying.Opener 'The White Bear' is a case in point. Whilst energetic from the start, it really impresses with its cathartic, shameless rock out about two thirds of the way through - but DSP aren't unwilling to strip things away and slow things down when it's conducive to ratcheting the energy back up again. The band don't like to stay still for long; even the drumming is always designed as an integral part of the sound, vigorously churning out ambitious repeated rolls and builds, for example on 'Wicked Conductors'. On that song, when the band announce that they're "electric", they sound more convincing than most bands would - part of that is because of how confident the music sounds.Hanging Out With Humans isn't toweringly original, and it will also prove a little frustratingly short for those who find its infectious sound appealing, but it is extremely effective at what it aims to do, which we can safely assume is to be the soundtrack to good times. If and when DSP put out a more fully-fledged album, it will be interesting to see if they can escape the samey-ness which this collection of songs often veers dangerously close to. 80%Data.Select.Party on Myspace