- PIPER FERGUSON
- Singer/chant specialist Nic Offer is on the far right.
There are certain things in the world that make you move. Hurricane-force winds, for instance, or a machine gun spraying bullets at your feet. A freight train headed directly at you will also generally cause movement. A glacier? Glaciers move mountains. Then there’s Sacramento/New York band !!! (Chk Chk Chk). Now, even though !!! aren’t a freight train or a glacier, their hirsute disco-house will move you. Actually, they are a freight train, and you want ’em to mow you down. The rhythm guitar is unstoppable—Mario Andreoni’s fitted rhythm fans across the frets. Add a little wah-wah, some distortion, a slight phaser effect, at 120 beats per minute? Kablam! You’ve got a dance-punk craze on your hands. Or did, in 2004, with their release Louden Up Now. Presently, with their fifth studio album, Thr!!!er, the dirt of the craze has been glossed up a bit, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less danceable.
Leading the !!! charge is singer/chant specialist Nic Offer. During the band’s instrumental sections, he conducts interpretive, aerobic hand-jive workshops. The music controls him. Look for strut-hopping and hip-thrusting, where it’s Mr. Offer if you’re nasty. The combustion is infectious. So Saturday, raise your Shishkaberries high to the sky, succumb to the Offer, and commence gusto-movement therapy. If you can’t dance to !!!, you’re either a desert cactus or Michelangelo’s David. Offer spoke.
Do you believe in spontaneous combustion?
Like where people just burst into flames? I don’t know. This past Saturday, we played on a beach in San Sebastián, Spain. Immediately after the encore, I kicked off my shoes, ripped off my shirt, and ran and jumped in the ocean. I wasn’t on fire, but I’d like to think I was.
!!! play Bumbershoot today at 6:15 pm on the Fisher Green Stage.
