!!! (Chk Chk Chk) - Myth Takes

If movie bigwigs were to ever remake Godzilla again, we’d want !!! to be involved. So instead of the big, hairy ape clumping its way around skyscrapers, a gaggle of gangly dance-punkers would gallop through the streets of New York causing all sorts of percussion-related boogy chaos, the likes of which haven’t been seen since Studio 54 spilt out onto the street in the 70s. We’re not sure if Matthew Broderick would get involved, but whatever. He was rubbish anyway.

‘Myth Takes’ sees !!! throwing off the chains of now-yawnsome ‘punk-funk’ (a tag they’ve been tarred with for most of their existence) and, like LCD Soundsystem, decided to take their sound to a whole other level of amazingness. Where their previous two albums were filled with sprawling bass-funk monsters, ‘Myth Takes’ shuffles and twists like the coolest dad at the coolest wedding in the world, keeping their frenetic, funky boom-bass but slicing off any unnecessary bits: the title track stomping along with spaghetti western guitar and vocalist Nic Offer’s trademark hushed non-melodies, while ‘All My Heroes Are Weirdos’ clang-funks its way into your brain with all the subtlety of an six foot wasp.

Elsewhere, ‘Heart Of Hearts’ and ‘Bend Over Beethoven’ ensure !!! will be soundtracking dancefloors across the globe for months to come, the former being a futuristic grime-pop soul masterpiece, the latter being an eight minute funk-rock epic, which DIY genuinely hopes is dedicated to ‘doing the dirty’ with the long-dead German composer. Or the cuddly movie star dog of the same name. You wouldn’t get that on a Kooks album.

Though fans of their previous ‘Louden Up Now!’ and self-titled debut might find ‘Myth Takes’ streamlined oddball pop hard to swallow, this is nontheless an album that renders their ‘punk-funk’ copyists utterly redundant: this is the sound of a band who are just gagging to blow your mind.