Album Review: !!! - Thr!!!er
- Written by Richard Wink
!!!’s deliberate career suicide has spanned five albums. Trying to recommend a !!! release is a blooming nightmare. You tell a pal “I’d like to recommend a band to you, but I’m going to have to write down their name”. Your pal probably thinks you’re going to tell them about Einstürzende Neubauten. You write it down for them and they say “Exclamation mark exclamation mark exclamation mark?” No, you then write Chk Chk Chk. “Wait, what? How do you say Chk Chk Chk?” Is it chick chick chick or check check check? I don’t know, but it’s problematic. Later on, your pal Googles ‘!!!’ and gets nothing.
In my opinion Thr!!!er marks the decline of !!!, a band that just won’t stop trying to get the world to dance. Only this time, they are the sole survivor on the dance floor, dancing alone to dated dead disco punk, a dirty glass of Matusalem 15 Gran Reserva spilling hot drops, as hips swivel.
Once upon a time, several records ago !!! were a band that had groove. They were exciting, vibrant and I might be wrong in this, but I reckon you could consider them relevant. Maybe the line-up changes have taken its toll, because the magic has gone, and though 2010’s Strange Weather, Isn't It? was patchy, Thr!!!er is a tawdry album which struts around like a bankrupt Cuban pimp. The fault lies mostly with the limp, almost deflated nature of the music, there are hooks but they aren’t barbed.
There is one saving grace. ‘Slyd’ doesn't really fit in with the rest of the samey pulp, though more throwback then a boomerang the track contains enough testosterone to support a gender reassignment clinic. It booms, it shakes, it is a runaway train without any breaks. Yes, this is the mover that we crave, but it sits apart from a dull clutter of pseudo-dance numbers.
Everything on Thr!!!er is smooth and laid back to the point of complacency. The edges don’t exist and that’s what makes the album, barring one track, profoundly unsexy. When you throw together club rhythms, and prance around the multi-faceted dance spectrum you run into the danger of losing clarity and producing something that is familiar, but lacking in the daring drive which soundtracks wild nights in the city.
Thr!!!er shows !!! to as a band who at one stage were pioneering , but never gained the fruits that the likes of LCD Soundsystem received by hook or by crooks. Standing alone on the battleground of a dead genre !!! are a cult band whose longevity and hedonistic desire for a good time appears belies the reality that the magic has gone.
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