!!!
Myth Takes

Warp 2007

By Hunter Stephenson

An air of dirty-feet bacchanalia suiting a drum circle has surrounded and shrouded !!! since their earliest arrival on the dance punk circuit many nights, many years ago. They are an eight-person band that blends in so well and generously with mere reverlers, seeming to party behind the openings in their curtain of novel punctuation, that it can be off-putting. This air is enforced because they seem cherry-picked and outsourced from experimental music people circles (like Out Hud) for the sole purpose of unleashing admirably bombastic, angry, inclusive singles – ones that can sound like Rednex’s “Cotton-Eye Joe” in blissfully awesome ways…that, agreed, should never be thought or imagined.

In their number and penchant for losing themselves in a pleasure-principle groove, they bypass the stripped-down essence and ethos of early punk rock. Their drug-trail cover art and a 2005 single’s titular reference to ecstasy add to this genre-talk separation. And yet, their prior album’s political citations and the perforated rush of aggressive percussion and violent guitar heard on so many tracks, including “All My Heroes are Weirdos” and “Must Be the Moon” from their latest and best album, Myth Takes, leave them as the quintessential survivors to successfully embody what dance punk ideally promised and promises – not as a music to be consumed by pink SPIN subscribers (see the Rapture’s last album) – but from the modern sex of those two styles, and the lovely offspring that can result.

Myth Takes starts with a jolting hat trick encompassing the two aforementioned tracks and the title track. Hopefully Nike’s Sport Music division isn’t signing off on a check just yet. The stormy guitar line on "Myth Takes" personifies the half-serious spook factor of a tarot card, as a bass line and hypnotic drum patter run persistently underneath, exercising the fast-life-dream expanse that is the song’s theme. Nic Offer plays the part using a whispered cool to narrate a dubious caution tale of cracked fate and blurred fame, jesting “sometimes you just stay home and watch movies.” A jungle of bongos reminiscent of Talking Heads on the new classic “Weirdos” is unrefined enough to kick grups like Joy Press down some stairs (fulfilling the promise of their live show), with Offer doing what comes natural; that means he goes apeshit and cockily talks and walks and like an idealist-be-damned to pluck-funk guitar, until the song’s tribal upbringing cascades at two-minutes into a foreboding calm only to pick back up with a sprinkling of vital "whoa-whoas." It’s the year’s most convincing, bugged-out enemy of remaining still.

After “Moon,” a bogglingly awkward yet killer, slithering ode to hook-ups with coke-raps, cell-phone reception and sheep “bahs” (I think), the album has already won. Serato mainstay “Heart of Hearts” marks the half-way point, where !!! cool down a little for the dance floor with that track’s signature candle-flicker disco and “Yadnus,” which sounds exactly like Gomma label act Who Made Who. Eight-minute upbeat ‘90s pastiche “Bend Over Beethoven” does a cavernous jam fit for taking bong hits at a festival and allowing for inevitable remixes.

Ender “Infinifold” finalizes the album’s latter-third drift with piano-driven introspection; somewhat typical and typically grandiose in ambition, but thanks to fittingly named band member Justin van der Volgen’s deft and epic production, !!! have carefully wandered there after using a medicine cabinet of musical substances. When Busy P’s CD Rainbow Man hit the speakers immediately after, there was a bit of the awe that sinks in from hearing a great album, and then I quickly went back to those first three tracks, to tumble down them again with uncertain glee.

This discourse of !!!'s Myth Takes is written by Hunter Stephenson for ignore Magazine, copyright 2007 .