There’s a pretty logical starting point for an article about a band with an unpronounceable name—in this case the California-cum-Brooklyn based !!! (which they verbalize as any repetition of a monosyllabic word or sound, such as “pow-pow-pow,” or more commonly “chk-chk-chk,” the clicking sound made by the Australian tribespeople in the film The Gods Must be Crazy which was subtitled as “!!!”). It is, obviously: “So what’s up with your name?”
Believe it or not, lots of people have asked the band that question before, which front man Nic Offer made clear within 30 seconds of getting on the phone.
“I’ve got to test this tape recorder thingy,” I say, “So … say something.”
Ossman replies: “Yeah … anyways, we chose the name because we’re total idiots and we wanted something that would be hard to be found on the Internet and if we had our choice we’d call it anything but that.”
With that out of the way, we were free to commence with the interview. Likewise with this article, with logical starting point No. 2.
!!! makes weird music. Like the Red Hot Chili Peppers (who they opened for in a recent UK tour), they mix aspects of rock, funk and disco. But comparing !!!‘s sound to the classic rock-y white-boy rap/funk of the Chili Peppers would be way, way off-target.
Says Ossman, “We come from similar influences, but we take it totally different directions.”
The direction they’ve taken—one that mixes elements of punk, early ‘90s techno and ‘70s heavy funk—is a bit daunting to try to wrap your head around at first.
“If I’m trying to explain [our sound] to someone at a Burger King in the Midwest, it’s easiest to say that it’s disco punk.” explains Ossman.
That this is the easiest description says a lot. After all, aren’t punk and disco antithetical? The Sharks and Jets of the musical world? This old division no longer stands, at least to Ossman and crew.
“Disco,” Ossman reflects, “is a music that resonates more with me [now that I’m] in my 30s than punk, but punk is definitely an attitude that shaped me.”
And, really, disco isn’t so much of punk’s opposite as it is a watershed, one that separates those who want raw, unfettered anger from their punk music—and those who like to shake their booty.
In the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, a flare-up of disco and funk inspired dance-punk bands like the Contortions, Gang of Four and Wire or, more famously, The Talking Heads and Blondie, who rebelled against the rebels by replacing punk’s somewhat repetitive guitar-and-distortion formula with choppy, angular rhythms, disco beats and synthesizers.
Later on, in the mid-‘90s, a sort of second wave of dance-punk rose up, ridden by bands like The Rapture, The Liars, Le Tigre, and !!!, who put out their first release in 1996. These bands strayed from the political trappings and preachy, puritanical politics of hardcore, preferring to put out what Ossman calls “dance-floor burners.”
“A goal for us is to just make funky, strange music. That’s what really intrigues us … dance floor burners.”
On Myth Takes, the band’s freshly released third album, !!! pulls no dance-band punches. At its slowest, as on the opening title track, the songs are driven by grooving, snare-soaked drum breaks with ethereal, reverby guitar and bass bouncing around on top of it. “If you have a groove under it,” says Ossman, “you can put any sort of abstractions on top that you want.”
At its fastest, in songs such as “All My Heroes are Weirdoes,” you get a hint of what a raging !!! show must be like.
“We’re always trying to match the live show to our records and I think that this is the record that has gotten closest to that. The new songs are beginning to grow teeth and get sweatier,” offers Ossman, adding, “The punk aspect really comes through most in our live shows.”
[Ethan Clark is an Asheville-based writer and cartoonist.]
!!! plays The Orange Peel (101 Biltmore Ave.) on Saturday, May 26. 9 p.m. $13/$15. 225-5851.
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