by LORRAINE CARPENTER

They don’t look dangerous, and their CD doesn’t come with warnings, but You Say Party! We Say Die!’s furious dancefloor jams and energetic punk anthems recently ruptured the pancreas of a concert critic in Berlin. Sure, he was exaggerating, but the lucky few witnesses of the band’s bumped-up set at last year’s Pop Montreal festival (this reporter wasn’t one of them) have attested to the impact of their live noise, one that allegedly makes “your internal organs re-organize themselves and your ears want to take a day off and go and lie down somewhere quiet.”

Far from their hometown of Abbotsford, B.C., 45 minutes from their current Vancouver base, in what’s known as the province’s “Bible belt,” singer Becky Ninkovic, bassist Stephen O’Shea, keyboardist Krista Loewen, drummer Devon Clifford and guitarist Derek Adam have been chewing up and spitting out crowds across the Atlantic, where their debut album Hit the Floor has generated critical acclaim, radio play and underground adulation. They’ll record a new LP in the New Year, and possibly trek out to Australia and Japan, but not before a little victory lap of the U.K. and Europe, particularly Germany, where their single “The Gap (Between Rich and Poor)” was released by Kitty-Yo, the same label that launched the careers of fellow Canadians Peaches and Gonzales. But there’s more to Europe’s appeal than business.

“The way they treat bands over there is a whole other level of hospitality. People are really, really keen on making us feel as comfortable as possible,” says Ninkovic. “There also tends to be a lot more excitement because they know you’ve come all this way. You feel a different type of energy from the crowds over there. It’s a really nice welcome.”

In the interest of respecting her homies, Ninkovic adds that the band’s increasingly infrequent gigs in Abbotsford never fail to be awesome.

“They’re super fun times. There’s all of our old friends, and we’ve got quite a little following of high school kids who really like us—we always try to do an all-ages show when we’re in Abottsford ’cause it’s fun to watch the kids go crazy.”

Despite all the love they’ve received since their LP surfaced last year, You Say Party! We Say Die! have suffered slightly at the hands of journalists, not from bad reviews, but from the dissemination of misheard lyrics.

“I always love it when you don’t know exactly what the singer is singing about and you can interpret it for yourself. I wanted to do that with our lyrics so that we wouldn’t be continually tagged as a sloganeering political band because of ‘The Gap,’” Ninkovic explains. “But it’s funny, ’cause in all these magazines in the U.K., they just totally make up their own lyrics. I’m reading, ‘She’s singing about chain stores,’ or, ‘She’s singing about taking a dump,’ and I’m like, ‘Ugh!’”

It’s not that her feelings are hurt by the waxy-eared scribes who’ve butchered her punk-rock poetry. Ninkovic just worries that her fans will take their words over hers, and get the wrong idea. “I think we made a little mistake by not writing out our lyrics. Next time…”

With Controller.Controller at Club Lambi on Saturday, Sept. 16, 8:30 p.m., $12

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