eMusic Review 1
Considering all the factors working against !!! over the past 15 years — major lineup changes, members who live on opposite coasts, the questionable expiration date of “dance punk” — you’d think they’d be a part-time prospect by now. But no, here they are, delivering a filler-free album that feels like a carefully-curated DJ set, including the disco inferno diatribes of “Get That Rhythm Right,” the convulsive funk of “Station (Meet Me At the)” and the locked grooves of “Fine Fine Fine,” which washes its chest-caving drum circle down with disembodied harmonies. And then there’s the peak house-party hooks of “Slyd,” a runaway single that raises the bar on the rest of the record by pairing flesh-and-blood beats and carefully constructed samples with the call-and-response choruses of Molly Schnick. A longtime friend of the band, Schnick used to play in the !!! side project Out Hud; if there’s any reason for them to reunite in the near future, it’s this floor-filler.
Now that the dance scene’s dominated by laptop-tethered EDM producers and the robot-rock of Daft Punk, it’s almost quaint to hear a record that drops us right back in the mid-’00s, a time dominated by club-ready bands… read more »
