If you are cool enough to have already heard this album, then you are probably one of "The Young and The Guestlist" of the albums title, hanging-out at one of the elite rock-dance spots in SF, NY or London, where several of the albums tracks can be heard nightly. But this disc packs more than just dance floor filler the tracks progress from
irresistible disco-punk like Even if it Takes All Night, to emotive Nick Drake meets minimal techno on Summer of Love, to dubbed out
afro-funk on Thunderbird and even art-damaged punk anthems like Riot Goin Off. The result leaves you feeling that youve spent the last 47 minutes rocking-out to a mix tape made by a post-punk obsessed DJ, from the year 2020. The Boys seem to incorporate a narrative element on the album as well; chronicling stages of the emotional arc in 24 hours of club life: from the dance floor to the after party, from the hotel lobby to the all too painful morning after. And they should know, as the bands line-up reads like a whos who of the San Francisco underground, including notorious DJs Jefrodisiac and Birdy P, collaborators like Techno innovator Jonah Sharp (Spacetime Continuum), Ghostly Records newest sighnee Broker/Dealer and even members of Sci-Fi dance squad The Vanishing.Despite the frequent comparisons to bands like Ladytron and Franz Ferdinand, this record is not another backward-looking piece of 80's nostalgia, but something new. The Young and The Guestlist comes off as a seamless fusion of dance and rock and is rumored to have drawn the interest of musicians as diverse as Pharrell Williams and Brian Eno. Finding inspiration in Acid-House and Italo Disco, and combining it with the vital energy of early Factory and Rough Trade (less the gothic darkness and musical ineptitude that plagued these labels respectively), Paradise Boys have made a visceral, hedonistic record equally at home on a Milan runway as on a drive down the California coast.
-Juxtapoz Magazine
