Lead singer Nic Offer talks us through !!!'s new album Shake The Shudder

The One 2

Well, we had this song and we thought it was fine but we played it for a friend and he thought it wasn't fine, said it was too spare. "More synths" he said. As it happened we were working on another instrumental that our U.K. Singer Lea Lea had written a few parts on, but every time I tried to write something on, it just wasn't as good as the melody for this one. So we just put one track on top of the other and moved Lea Lea's parts to the pre-chorus and outro. It's quite a dense mix, a lot to get lost in. We got pretty excited playing this one in the studio. Especially when the bass kicks back in after the chorus.

My fav moment is at 3:13, the two hits before the bass comes back in.

Dancing Is The Best Revenge

One of those ones, where I blinked and the lyrics were written. I didn't know I wanted to write it and when it was finished I had said like 10 different things that I wanted to say. It was a loop from one of our jams and it just sounded like a strut or a walk to me. I pitched up my vocals with a trick our Ableton rep had just showed us and when we played it for our drummer Paul he said: "Who's the girl? She sounds hot." I recorded some of the chorus vocals with Lea Lea in a Hungarian Hilton and she said: "It sounds like a single" and I was like: "really?" Next thing u know…

My fav part is the way my vocals sound in the verses. I wish I always sounded pitched up.

NRGQ

We did a lot of jamming for this record in Brooklyn, Sacramento, and Barcelona. We had a week off between Spanish and French festivals, so we got an Airbnb and a practice spot and set up mics. we jammed all day and I sat up late nights in my underwear and edited all the jams into little loops. We kept hearing that Midland track ‘Final Credits’ and liked the way he made an old disco loop sound fresh. We tried to use our jam loops as the old disco edit type of loop and make a more fresh type of dance track. We learned it and tried to inject that live funk into it.

My fav part is at 1:13 and 3:19 where the band simmers and the filter sweeps up into the chorus.

What R U Up 2day?

Rafael was working on a track when his 4-year-old daughter came up and asked if he could put her "in there" and pointed at the speakers. He put headphones on her, mic-ed her up and these are the parts she sang. He brought it to me and said: "I don't know if I'm being an annoying doting father but I think this might be good" and I was like: "Oh, this is definitely good" and we built the track around that and some other vocal parts from Lea Lea.

WTF r u thinking? My fav part is every part the 4-year-old sings! She’s fucking awesome!

Throttle Service

We wanted to get a Chic-type feeling for the vocals, so we sang this together with Molly Schnick and Cameron Mesirow on mic with no headphones. This one sounds like the beach to me, even if it didn't have the lyrics mentioning them. I always imagined it.

My fav moment is the way all the vocals sound together.

5 Companies

We were recording this album the week things got really bad for us in American politics. The songs were already written and this was the only one that really pointed the way to how dark things had become. This one to me sounds like XTC and Flying Lotus mashed up. If it doesn't sound like that to u, then that's great, I guess we came up with something more original. Shit... wait... maybe this just sounds like Berlin Bowie. Fuck. Another hard day's work for a dance punk band.

My fav moment is at 0:00 when the cocktail sound effects start the song. I don't know why, they just crack me up. I tried to add more!

Imaginary Interviews

All the interviews I've done have asked me about this song, because it has "interview" in the title presumably. One of those ones we like to write where we imagine what The Smiths would've sounded like if Johnny Marr had been able to make them as funky as he would've liked. Rafael wrote the lyrics to this one and I like that it's a sympathetic story about the type of egomaniac who would normally be villainized.

M fav moment is at 3:27 when the feedback squeals and the tracks come back in with the classic house type badoopbops. Rafael kept trying to put those in different songs but it just never felt right, and then we accidentally kinda did it here and really loved it.

Our Love (U Can Get)

Another one where we took the idea of treating a jam loop like a disco loop a house artist would sample and throw a kick drum underneath. We thought of replaying this one, but we liked the dustier, tight/uptight feel it had, so we kept it that way. The rhyme in the intro worked better with "pants" but I decided it would be funnier and more "on-brand" if I said shorts.

My fav moment is at 0:39 when my pitched down low vocals come in. Maybe I actually just wish I was always pitched down.

Things Get Hard

We wanted something tough sounding, and really liked the way the Kaytranada record sounded. It had that old chunky mpc sound, but sounded like a modern dance or hip hop record. This song was just a demo, but our co-producer Patrick Ford took it under his wing and brought it over here to mix with Matt Wiggins and they really turned it out.

My fav moment is the lyrics. Maybe my favorite on the record.

R Rated Pictures

Based off a jam I had with Mario, this always felt destined to be the last track of the record, so I wrote it about walking home after the club. Years ago I had hung out on mushrooms at some bar that was playing Hank Williams, and I really got into his yodel thing. The way that he just put all that pain you can't put into words and let it out really affected me, so I made a mental note to someday do a song with a yodel in it. Almost 10 years later, here it is.

My fav moment at 3:31 when I finally shut the fuck up and the band really stretches out and jams.

Shake The Shudder is out now via Warp.