With a wit, swagger and well-tuned ear for the dance floor, !!! have followed up the now classic Louden Up Now (2004) with the kind of rock album that many had thought extinct. Muscular and nimble, smart and funny, strange and endlessly sing-a-long-able, Myth Takes is a sprawling experiment in pop songwriting and musical irreverence. From the bass-heavy psychedelia of album opener "Myth Takes" straight through to the lilting beatless ballad of the last track "Infinifold" the album lives up to it's title as a rambunctious, complete work wrapped in its own mystique.
Review by Tim Sendra
Of all the dance-punk revivalists, !!! has been the most consistently interesting and challenging, not to mention the group most likely to fill the dancefloor on indie rock night. While their previous album, the political and righteous Louden Up Now, was good enough to vault them to the level of the bands that inspired them (Gang of Four, the Pop Group, Liquid Liquid), Myth Takes firmly establishes them there. It's a different fire that burns here for !!!, mostly setting aside political concerns for fiery dancefloor rave-ups. The band sounds inspired, like they are plugged directly into a wall socket. The first three tracks are like opening a door and being blasted backward by a wall of flame and heat. Nic Offer's vocal chants, asides, and strung-together proclamations are more frantic than ever, and when he turns it down a notch, he sounds nearly sexy (as on "Must Be the Moon," a desperate story of sex and lust in the city). He has to be a live wire of energy to keep up with the band, which burns brightly and plays like they have something to prove from beginning to end. This is especially true of Justin van der Volgen, whose bass work underpins the freewheeling walls of chik-ing guitars with a fluid and funky bottom. His production is a masterwork, balancing and blending a kaleidoscope of guitars, drums, percussion, keys, and vocals. The record could have easily sounded like a mess, but he makes it sound alive and raw. When !!! finally slows things down after that initial burst, they do some interesting things -- "Heart of Hearts" is a dancefloor filler that manages to sound menacing and rubbery at the same time, "Break in Case of Anything" is a kitchen-sink funk epic that has elements of disco, dub, hip-hop, and a killer horn section, and "Yadnus" is a fun mash-up of glitter drumbeats, tough-guy vocals, chicken-scratch guitars, and sweeping synths. The only tracks that let the side down a bit are the slightly generic "Bend Over Beethoven," which sounds like something they could have come up with in their sleep, and the ballad that ends the album, "Infiniford." On that last song, Offer's vocals don't suit the somber mood very well, and it's a down note to end such a wild ride of an album. These stumbles aside, Myth Takes is a thrilling success. Not too many bands even in heyday of the initial wave of dance-punk released records as full of energy, intelligence, and ferocious funk as this.
!!!
Myth Takes
[Warp; 2007]
Rating: 8.0
With his midriff-baring t-shirts and loose-limbed dance moves, !!!'s Nic Offer is a total goofball in the unselfconscious way that only really cool guys can get away with being. If you've ever attended a performance by !!! or Offer's former band, Out Hud, then you're familiar with his repertoire: the Christ-like wingspan, overhead clapping, shimmying hips, gangly duck-walking, dervish spins, scissor kicks, and humpy pelvic thrusts. It's like the mutant spawn of step aerobics, Flashdance, and Electric Boogaloo in an arena-ready package: ridiculous, extravagant, and completely awesome. Offer's stage presence isn't just deeply entertaining; it's an ice-breaker that gives us permission, by example, to forget ourselves and celebrate with abandon. You can tell he's having a hell of a time, and his enthusiasm is infectious.
This wanton enthusiasm permeates Myth Takes, !!!'s most consistent album to date. They've always been polyrhythmic pop experimenters in the vein of Talking Heads or Arthur Russell, leavening guitar-and-horn driven disco-punk with adventurous dashes of trance, funk, soul, krautrock, and points beyond. Given this aesthetic dilettantism-- plus !!!'s supple rhythm section and knack for explosive hooks-- the band, on paper, seems to have developed a template that should turn out smart bangers every time. But in practice, !!!'s songwriting has sometimes struggled to keep up with their prodigious ideas. For every pitch-perfect dancefloor meltdown like "Me and Giuliani Down By the School Yard (A True Story)" or their take on the Magnetic Fields' "Take Ecstasy with Me", the band's previous albums often squandered their momentum with boggy, static grooves and bizarre tangents. I'm not one to chastise bands for ambition, even when it leads them astray, but there's something to be said for zeroing in on what you do best. What !!! does best are the incendiary disco-punk raveups that, happily, take up most of the space on Myth Takes.
Any tentative or half-baked delivery is all but absent from Myth Takes, which rampages through the annals of kinetic music without letting genre tropes override or diffuse the songs' impact. The cerebral always takes a backseat to the visceral, and the album, while varied, is united by relentless propulsion. The title track's elastic bass and spaghetti-western guitar licks are a tense backdrop for Offer's smarmy scatting-- not to mention an effective foil to the ominous funk-laden following track, "All My Heroes Are Weirdoes". Mobile bass and telegraphic synths dominate the sex-jam "Must Be the Moon", a sort of pimp-strutting nursery rhyme for the 21+ set ("One drink, two drinks, three drinks, four!"). "A New Name" holds two contrasting modes in balance: earthy funk verses and a spacey soul-noir chorus that sloughs off tiny ice-chip tones, testifying to the importance of bassist and sound engineer Justin Vandervolgen's subtle tweaks. No longer experimenting for experimentation's sake, every beat-breaking decision on Myth Takes serves to reinforce the monumental rhythms.
When the album is at its less-than-best, it's because the band is playing against its strengths. From a technical standpoint, Offer's not an amazing singer. He's terrific at sultry murmurs, yelps, and chants, and luckily, he stays in these modes for most of the album. He doesn't fare as well when he just sings, as we discover on "Sweet Life". For one thing, he sounds hesitant, and his outsized party-starter persona slips a bit. For another, his lyrics tend toward the absurd, and you can only get away with lines like "sleeping underneath the blanket of dread" if you deliver them with serious bluster. But middling memories of "Sweet Life" are quickly obliterated by the impossibly funky squelch of "Yadnus", which is also a turning point-- the album's final third sinks into relative abstraction. The last three tracks' murky digressions bring the album to a brainy close that's satisfying after the brawny pageantry of its front end. By sequestering the cerebral stuff that erratically peppered their prior albums to a closing come-down, Myth Takes, presents !!! as a band that's figured out exactly what it's good at. If they stay the course, continuing to streamline and focus, we can expect many fine albums to come.
-Brian Howe, March 02, 2007
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