I went to Saturday night's United State of Electronica show at the new Crocodile totally ready to hate it and have a terrible time. You see, after a couple listens, I am really not feeling their new song, "All the World," which debuted on Line Out last week. U.S.E have always been electro-pop maximalists, but even by their standards, I thought this track was just way too much—no dynamics or build, just all cylinders all the time, from one balloon-dropping chorus to another. Worse than that, the group's unstoppable positivity—formerly restrained to singing the joys of such modest subjects as Seattle's neighborhoods, beaches, and discotheques—was now promoting something like World Unity Through Song, the kind of sentiment that just feels a little too Jesus-freaky for me (lines about "sisters and brothers," "joining the mission," etc.). It occurred to me that maybe I'd just had my fill of this band and their positive mental attitude, that, as with Shout Out Out Out Out, I just prefer my anthemic electro rock with a little more dark times, debt, and doubt.

So, yeah, totally ready to hate on this show. But then, U.S.E. Damn! I'm still not sold on their new EP, and now that I think about it, it's easily been a year or two since I listened to their first album, but it is downright impossible to be mad at the band's live show. There's a lot to love: keyboardist Noah Star Weaver, with his sequin bodysuit, his Christmas-lit belt, and his rubbery body bending back and forth to the beat without ever dislocating his mouth from his vocoder-equipped microphone; drummer Jon e. Rock, who busts out amiable, on-beat raps while keeping metronome-perfect time; vamping tiara-wearing vocalists Carly Jean Nicklaus and Amanda Okonek; the (relatively) unshowy core of guitarists Jason Holstrom, Peter Sali, and Derek Chan. By three songs in, I was bouncing on my heels a bit (the rest of the ebullient crowd was way ahead of me, hands up in the air, bodies twisting and pogoing, singing along); by the time they played "It Is On!" halfway through the set, I was (once again) hooked. U.S.E are simply the most charming and fun party band in Seattle.

Their set was a mix of a few old favorites ("Open Your Eyes," "Emerald City") and a lot of newer songs (that one they've been playing with the chorus of "love is gonna break your heart," another about "bouncing on the ceiling," several more for which my notes become jubilantly illegible but whose lyrics were doubtless all about dancing, love, and celebrating good times). Jon e. Rock rapped one song into a loose interpolation of "One Nation Under a Groove." Someone crowd-surfed and stage-dived during new single "All the World" (huh, where did the old "no stage-diving" signs go?). They closed (no encore) with a song about a "river of love" sweeping everyone up in its path—and you know, watching them play, it really is more fun to go with U.S.E's flow than it is to fight that current.