!!!
Published by Under The Radar
“Is it gonna be funky?” I ask !!! guitarist/bassist Mario Andreoni about the upcoming record. If you know his band’s dancefloor post-punk, you expect the affirmative while perhaps wondering to what degree.
“Well… yeah,” he says. “Some of the tracks are definitely more funky than I think we’ve ever been, but some of it is just a lot more freeform than we’ve ever been. And some of it’s downright not funky. We’re taking little gems that we had and trying to fully flesh ’em out, and not really thinking, ‘Is this gonna be really funky or not?’ But the songs that already have a definite structure, that are funky, I can’t think of anything as hooky or as funky [that we’ve done].”
A seven-piece outfit that straddles the map (Andreoni lives in Sacramento, most of the others in Brooklyn), !!! are roughly one-third done with their new album as of November 2005. It will be released in the summer of 2006, again on Touch and Go. There’s no title yet, and there probably won’t be until the very last minute, according to Andreoni.
The band is hoping that the title will be the only thing to come in just under deadline.
“The last record [2004’s Louden Up Now] was a record we were trying to finish versus a record that we would put on,” says Andreoni. We kept extending the deadline and we were just getting everything in to try and make Touch and Go’s release date. So there was a really panicked situation, and I think this time we’re all resolved to making the best record that we can.”
Is that to say they were disappointed with the last one?
“I think that we all felt we could do better,” admits Andreoni. “John started singing on some of the tunes on the record literally like a week before we were finished. ‘Dear Can’ was in an instrumental state for the longest time, and then John put vocals on it right as we were almost finished, and it completely opened the song up. I felt kind of cheated, thinking that it could have been developed a little bit better.”
This time !!! have taken a workshop approach that ties the recording process to the live show in advance. “We’re trying to find a balance to where we’re fully fleshing out the tunes,” says Andreoni. And then the songs that we feel are really strong live-potential songs, we wanna take those out and play ’em and make sure that they have the legs on ’em before we go into the studio.” Hence their brief West Coast fall tour.
What’s to be expected as far as cursing and political lyrics?
“They’re more personal… Nic [Offer] has always written lyrics from sort of a punk perspective, pointing out, like, ‘This is fucked up,” or something like that. I don’t know, maybe nothing striking is out right now that he feels needs to be pointed out. It’s a constantly rotating thing.”