!!! – Myth Takes

If there was any justice in the world, !!! (pronounced chk chk chk) would be filling dance floors all across the developed world. Instead of shaking their hips to the new Fedde Le Grand song, which bizarrely, sounds exactly like the last one, but with Dr. Zoidberg whooping and scuttling for it’s entire duration, they’d be doing it to this. The rolling basslines, the insatiable rhythm, every song on this album has the ingredients to make the clubs heave. Yet something tells me they will never topple Fedde, or any other mainstream dance artist, of the dubious glory of getting the small town discotheques heaving on a beer and vomit filled Friday night. But why? Probably because they’re not nearly brainless enough.

!!!’s last album, ‘Louden Up Now’ was brilliantly flawed, showing off the bands uncanny knack for creating something that people could get down to while also being markedly aggressive. However, there was a tendency for the band to get lost within their own songs and for every 10 minutes of genius, there seemed to be 3 minutes of aimless wandering, or infantile swearing. However, it’s been roughly 4 years since then, and time spent touring with the Red Hot Chili Peppers seems to have helped them realise their ability to knock out pulsating dance floor anthems.

With Myth Takes, !!! come storming out of the blocks. The first three tracks are the best start to an album this year, battering the senses with a startling array of rhythms and ideas that are so well crafted and realized in their vision it’s startling. ‘Myth Takes’ starts off the album with an infectious bass line and a taut rhythmic drumming pattern while Nic Offer jumpily whispers about nothing in particular. This in itself personifies the beauty of the album, in that while Offer rarely sings about anything other than dancing, fucking or dropping pills, the motifs generated suit the sleazy funk bassline and rigid hi-hat background so well it doesn’t really matter. The next two songs continue the pattern, combining a knack for combining a tight sense of melody and rhythm with lyrics that, as previously mentioned, aren’t particular poignant, but suit the sordid backdrop they display themselves in front of perfectly.

While the album starts off brilliantly, it ends just as well. By shoving the more immediate material towards the start of the album, the band has given themselves a chance to branch out into more adventurous territory towards the end of the album. ‘Bend Over Beethoven’ is somewhat of a landmark for the dance-punk genre, an 8 minute song comprising of a swirling 6 minute instrumental mid-section which climaxes into raucous chorus, while ‘Break In Case Of Anything’ is a disco anthem in the best sense of the word, centering on an all female chorus who repeat their ‘Na Na Na Na’ backdrop like women possessed, while the rest of the song falls apart around it. As the album reaches an increasingly more frenetic climax, ‘Infiniford’ is the comedown to the 43 minutes of mayhem preceding it, perfectly reliving the regret many people feel after a night out where they’ve over-indulged just a little more than they intended.

However, the album is not without it’s flaws. The middle section, despite containing the pounding single ‘Heart of Hearts’, contains neither enough experimentation nor enough rhythm to grab the attention. ‘Sweet Life’ for example, seems to run out of ideas halfway through the song, and Offer is reduced to shouting the alphabet over a fuzzy collage of noise. At times, tracks tend to veer off into Mars Volta esque walls of noise that last for about 20 seconds before finishing the track or randomly lurching back into action. As well as this the drumming sounds remarkably similar on certain tracks, mainly consisting of neat hi-hats or cymbal crashes.

However, despite these minor flaws, !!! have released an album that is simultaneously worthy of hip-shaking or head banging, which is a remarkable feat in a musical landscape where rock and dance music have become so polarized and distinct. It’ll make you shake your hips, it’ll make you want to take home the ugliest girl at the party just for the hell of it. It’s the sound of the weekend. It’s the sound of your weekend.

8.5/10

Steve Wakefield

!!! - Heart Of Hearts

!!! - Bend Over Beethoven