Bocce

Bocce are hip, Bloc Party hip. They are less Radiohead’s The Bends gone new wave and more Godspeed’s entire family acting immature and being electrocuted. It’s easy hearing "Ping Pong Pixel” blossoming into the verdant tech-house homage of "Bahai Cassette is Playing at My House (Dadmobile Underwater House),” without the choral chanting or satirical name-checking, to say that these guys have the digital range of Do Make Say Think trying to play their way out of an FTP file nobody’s opened. They’ve got strings and horns; they’ve got a cool-on-paper C.V. of PWYC parties and live associations with some of Canada’s most hyped yet underrated acts (Torngat, Caribou, Kids on TV). But it’s just too easy to give these guys parsimony with all this "credibility” at their back. The hater in me is too jaded. The name even gives them a rhetorical retort to PhDs like me and with lines like, "I’ll be cumming in your life/in your wife/in a lot of things you own,” you’d have to be missing the joke to say that a band synonymous with a game of finesse over power can’t quite "do it” for you. Instead, here’s a cheap shot: they’re so hip you know how it feels.