Eat Sugar

Detail: As soon as the laser sears the aluminum surface of Eat Sugar’s new disc, It’s Not Our Responsibility, any booty with a soul attached is liable to grow a mind of its own, get itself up off the chair and shake its proprietor around like a useless sack of meat. But while the bumpin’ backbeat is undeniable, Eat Sugar are far from routine, mindless dance-party rockers.

There are no long-haired dudes in yellow sunglasses twiddling mystery knobs behind racks of esoteric electronic gear, no strobe light/fog machine live shows featuring androgynous band members in heavy makeup and absolutely no drum machines.

Can you get down to ’em? Sure. But does Eat Sugar have anything to do with Dance music clichés like Acid House or remixes? No way. While a synthesizer stands in place of the standard-issue guitar, and the up-front drumbeats provide the definitive drive to their songs, Eat Sugar is indeed a Rock group at heart. They’re just one with dancable tendencies. And, thankfully, these boys have a foundational flair for the timelessly punky, left-of-center element of the keyboard-happy New Wave to which their sound is indebted.

They crib only the best from classic bands like Devo, groundbreaking late-’70s L.A. Synth-Punk progenitors The Screamers and Dayton’s legendary ’90s herky-jerk noisemakers Brainiac. It’s an approach that sets them apart from the much more affected, hyper-programmed Disco fetishizing of glossy Dance Rock contemporaries such as VHS Or Beta and The Faint.