Before Sextile’s yes, please. approaches the ears, it graces the eyes. I can’t help but immediately adore the album artwork. The cover image is of band members/founders Brady Keehn and Melissa Scaduto, Scaduto looking at us directly with an open mouth and a lollipop (posing it as a sequel to their 2023 LP, Push – the cover of which is another image of presumably Scaduto’s tongue). On top, “Sextile” is written out like a kind of digital ransom note – each letter a different, but recognisably techy, typeface, unified by neon yellow colouring. And, now, once yes, please. is ear-, and brain- and body-bound, it seems that this logo has been designed perfectly to mirror the album’s sound. Each track is unique in its ‘typeface’, its form, but all are bonded by the same impeccable production, the same EBM-style physicality, the same yellow fluoresce of greatness.
As suggested by the visual link to Push, yes, please. similarly drips with the produced sweat of irrepressible danceability, while bringing with it the band’s post-punk foundations, most apparent in its industrial noise and compelling lyricism. The first track to follow the intro is the self-prophetic, self-actualising ‘Women Respond to Bass’ – it creates the very bass that it lyrically celebrates and drives the listener to dance with such immediate effect that it’s as if the bodily response is pre-programmed and activated. Within the track is a feminine nihilism – “take the piss, carry this, where’s your collar?” and “is there more? meet the floor, rhythm calls ya” – a “f*** it, let’s dance” mindset adopted in response to the exhausting and inexhaustible control of misogyny.
The lyrics throughout yes, please. continue to explore this ever-engaging, ever-human dissonance – flitting between the existential and the primal, the mind and the body. ‘Push Ups’ feat. Jehnny Beth says “I have no god and no answer / I take my right for freedom / Where I go I’m innocent” in a verse, before outro-ing with a reverberating chant of “push it” – gloriously reminiscent of The Substance’s Sue-fronted workout sequences. Even ‘S is For’, a track which lists words that, unsurprisingly, begin with the letter S, feels more like a beatnik-esque performance than a page from an adult-oriented alphabet book, the repeated “sex, shit, swell, stiff, slag, snap, shut”, seeming somewhere between a manifesto and a hypnotism.
Sonically, ‘Rearrange’ is a stand-out, the bass squelching, wet and sticky, while the percussive elements seem as dry as if performed on a hollow bone. Despite being electronic, Sextile manage to create something very naturally tangible through all of yes, please.: a felt muscularity, visible, blood-filled veins. The word ‘infectious’ is perhaps too often used to describe dance music, but in the case of this album, it truly is. Even when played at my place of work, in front of customers, I was unable to resist its viral call to dance. More than aptly named, it’s easy to say yes, please. with gusto to this offering from Sextile, and enjoy every second of its cellular invasion.
