If !!!’s (commonly pronounced, Chk chk chk) Myth Takes, released in 2008, is a shower of hailstones, then their latest full-length — Strange Weather, Isn’t It? — is more like a muted blanket of volcanic ash.
The album’s opening track, “AM/FM,” lures the listener in with a steady, funky beat and cooing vocals, but after a few tracks in, the expected tumult of !!!’s spunky lyrics, as heard in Louden Up Now’s (2004) “Dear Can,” are scarce.
Instead, the excitement level maintains itself at a cool, two-steppable funk, particularly in “The Most Certain Sure” and the appropriately and cleverly titled fourth track, “Jamie, My Intentions are Bass.”
While the Brooklyn-based band sounds like they’re undergoing a lyrical and vocal cooling in Strange Weather, Isn’t It? — as we don’t hear too much of front man Nic Offer’s signature gravelly and punctuating delivery — !!! seems to be grooving to a tamer beat in terms of the album’s rhythmic and tonal variety.
In tracks like “Wannagain Wannagain” and “Steady as the Sidewalk Cracks,” the interjections of the saxophone are noticeably subtler and less creatively arranged than in, say, their 2004 single “Pardon My Freedom.” The jiving vocals of“Wannagain Wannagain,” however, does make it one of the more playful tracks of the album.
The album’s sixth track, “Hollow,” is a head-bobber, and by this point in the nine-track release, the listener feels as if he’s been coated with a fine layer of !!!’s (Eyjafjallajökull, Eyjafjallajökull, Eyjafjallajökull’s?) ashes.
The long instrumental segments of the closing track, “The Hammer,” are an attempt to hypnotize rather than stimulate, making for a flatline ending to an overall mellow collection.
While the pace and punch of this newest album may reveal a softer, and perhaps more grooveable, side of the dance-punk group, the repetitive noise of many of the tracks seem to just be extra “stuff.”
Unlike the low-key but transforming melodies in older albums, the tracks of Strange Weather, Isn’t It? make the listener want the head-bashing rather than head-lulling, grimy rather than humdrum tunes, of the earlier !!!.
