[Music] !!! (chk chk chk) – Myth Takes
October 29, 2011
Don’t know, don’t care
The cover of this album is a very good illustration of what’s inside. It’s colourful, messy, has many details and all of aims for pure fun and good times. Sadly, despite good intentions, it’s really just flat too afraid to go crazy. It’s only fun as an idea, too afraid to execute it, in case people will find it silly. That’s exactly how !!!’s music sounds like. The concept is great, and good enough that even if !!! won’t be brilliant they could be a band I will listen to more than occasionally. They never really reach their objective. They focus on their weakness and only hints at their strength, and overall too afraid to go over-the-top. They’re just too cool to dance.
It was !!!’s curious name that attracted me and I know almost nothing about this ‘dance punk’ scene, other than Death From Above 1979 who I really like. Still, I’m familiar with dance music (Mostly Techno and a little Funk) and it’s easy to see what !!! are aiming at. They made a party album which relies on drumbeats and bass lines, with hooks and structure being an afterthought. They also add layers of sound, mostly to make the songs seem ‘fuller’, more interesting and to increase the fun atmosphere. It’s a good idea for a rock album, and since I’m more familiar with the gloomier side of rock it only makes it more exciting, but in the end it doesn’t really work.
As I said before, !!! focus on their weak side rather than their strong side. There’s not one song in this album who has a strong enough groove that can be extended for the sake of dancing, and they do extend some songs for that reason. Use Death From Above’s “Sexy Results” or “Romantic Rights” has a point of reference and you won’t find a bass line that comes to them. No, you won’t even the bass lines. You can’t really hear the bass. As a jam band, !!! have no reason to exist. “Heart of Hearts” has an extra 2 minutes I will never bother with again, and once the chant in “Must Be the Moonlight” ends I will just skip it. The only time their jamming pays off is in “Bend Over Beethoven”, where layers of sound build up to one last playing of the chorus like a Techno song. It’s not particularly effective, and even if it’s constructed well like Fluke you can’t get lost in it like a song by Fluke. It’s only good as an idea.
It’s the hooks that save !!! and kept me listening, hoping some bassline may become audible suddenly and I won’t be able to resist dancing. If !!! gave up the jamming and became a Pop-Rock band like Maroon 5 (They actually remind me a lot of Maroon 5), they could be great. The few hooks in Myth Takes will make me come back. “Heart of Hearts”, “Must Be the Moon” and “Bend Over Beethoven” are all catchy on the first listen, and “Bend Over”‘s hook is one of the few moments where !!! don’t sound like they’re too cool to dance. There’s also a chant at the end of “Must Be the Moon” that begs to be sung along to. They also benefit from a good vocalist with a smooth voice that makes the band sound as cool as they want to be, but, sadly, it’s only during the hooks. Since the songs are structured to put jamming in the forefront and hooks as a minor asset, all there’s left is a “could-have-been-good” Pop-Rock album.
Perhaps it’s the production that holds !!! back. Myth Takes sounds like those 80′s albums that you need to turn the volume almost to the maximum to hear things clearly, only here even after turning the volume up, you still can’t hear things clearly. The production is flat as hell and makes the band sound so subdued, as if they’re playing without a tiny sense of fun. They sound like people playing fodder in a bar just so it could say they have a live band. It makes the layers inaccessible. You know there are layers of music and plenty of details, but you can’t really feel them. This is the biggest problem with Myth Takes. It’s an album that’s trapped as an idea that never gets executed. It’s supposed to be fun and energetic and colourful and quircky, but it’s only supposed to. I’ll have to check other albums to see whether it’s shitty production job or just a band without spirit.
The good parts in Myth Takes are good enough to make me want to check out the rest of the band’s catalogue and come back to them, but the rest might as well not exist. It’s not offensively bad, the only thing that is offensive is how the potential was wasted. But most of the albums is only slightly interesting and never exciting. Some stuff is worth hearing once or twice, and only one song is truly awful (That would be the pointless title-track which is short and yet too long.). It’s worth getting “Heart of Hearts”, “Must Be the Moon” and “All My Heroes Are Weirdos”, and then get Pop Will Eat Itself’s Box Frenzy to understand how this dance-rock-thingy should sound.
Highs: Hooks and the vocalist
Lows: Shitty production, flat sound, never capturing the sense of fun it tries to achieve
Rating: 2/5
