!!!

"Hello London. Have you all taken your pills?"

I've seen Nick Offer start shows with this question before, as !!! took to the stage at Reading last year. That was a mid-afternoon slot, and I was way too stoned to enjoy it properly. I could hear this great music coming in through the fuggy haze I was in, but it wasn't quite clicking into place. Heavy feet, heavy eyelids and creeping paranoia are not what you need at a !!! gig, not at all. You need to be on the right drugs for this band. Maybe that's why Dr Nick dishes out such explicit instructions.

Funny then that the new single ('Take Ecstacy with Me') sounds as stoned as I was - it's miles away from the instantly catchy juddering punk-funk of the 'hits' 'Me & Giuliani Down By The Schoolyard' and 'Pardon My Freedom'. Soporific strings and ambient synth slip across the slick surface of the beats, the vocal high on reverb and far away somewhere in the distance... it's not so much the atmosphere of a sweaty club at midnight as the last gasp of a beach party at sunrise. But this is just the warm up.

"People always ask me, what's so fuckin' good about dancing - how the fuck should should I know? Even I can barely understand it... "

Nick slides up through the gears pretty quickly. And it's Nick that makes this whole thing work really. Yeah, the band have got it going on, sure. They can carve out brilliant staccato neo-funk rhythms and basslines, and keep it going pretty much indefinitely. But it's Nick Offer that gets it moving. The vocals give the songs ebb and flow, build ups and blow outs. He writhes around the stage, hair everywhere, arms flailing out in barely controlled abandon, his face screwed up as he snarls the words out, then he's in the crowd and people are going fuckin crazy, everyone trying to keep up with him, and his clothes are being pulled open and he's leering dementedly into the sea of raised arms and smiling faces like some kind of sharp-toothed demon hedonist. Then he's standing on the bass drum smashing the cymbals with his hands, and then he's backing into the bass player, then rolling on the floor. The entire band feed off his energy; it gives them focus and they know they gotta keep it in some kind of song-shaped form - there's a frontman and he's doing stuff, it can't just be an endless jam. And this is a Good Thing.

Truth be told, the sound is pretty shitty at the 100 Club tonight, the PA isn't really big enough for the band, and even though it's billed as sold out, it doesn't feel really feel full - !!! work better at an 'event' than just a straight gig. But this band seem incapable of having an off night. They just have to turn up and do their fucking thing. Because it's infinitely danceable, and Offer is infinitely watchable and completely committed to putting on a good show and having a great time, and when a band sound this good and try this hard, they just can't fail.

photo: Alan Wilson