News

!!! Announce Details Of New Album

• 24th May 2010

“Everyone wants to make their Berlin record, and everyone’s got a Berlin album in them, so we wanted to put ours out,” !!!’s lead singer Nic Offer says, with tongue partially in cheek, of the group’s fourth album, Strange Weather, Isn’t It? Following in the footsteps of artists like David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Depeche Mode, Nick Cave, U2 and Peaches, who have flocked to Berlin in order to mainline the city’s legendary dark energy, !!! travelled to the German capital to produce a record that is simultaneously brooding and their glossiest, most immediate record yet.

On the one hand, Strange Weather, Isn’t It? is !!!’s most texturally rich record to date and is filled with deep, galvanizing grooves in the tradition of 2003’s “Me and Giuliani Down By the Schoolyard (A True Story)” and their massive cover of Magnetic Fields’ “Take Ecstasy With Me.” On the other, there’s a dark undercurrent running through the record that acts as a counterpoint to the glittering surfaces. In other words, although only 20% of the record was recorded in Berlin (the other 80% split between New York and Sacramento, California), Strange Weather, Isn’t It? is the perfect Berlin album.

“We always go to a different environment on the 1% chance that it would slightly influence the record, because that would be worth it,” says Offer. Indeed, !!!’s previous album, 2007’s Myth Takes, was recorded in a rented house in Nashville far away from the honky tonks and Music Row, with the isolation instilling an almost mystical sense of discipline in the band. But there’s something undoubtedly special about Berlin’s atmosphere, particularly now that it has become the clubbing capital of the world. In fact, the band set up camp in the basement of a club where they could jam all day and all night, except during soundcheck upstairs.

“There’s always the romance of a Berlin record, but on top of that there’s something happening there that isn’t happening in New York and is totally exciting,” Offer continues. “It wasn’t like the whole band was going out to clubs all the time, but there was a core group of us and we would hit it. And it was incredible. We were trying to soak that up. It’s still something that I hope could happen over here. In some ways I guess it never will. But if we could just even begin to try to catch up to what’s going on there over here it would be a musical revolution… So this was our stab at starting the musical revolution,” Offer adds, laughing.

Apparently, the revolution will consist of tightly coiled guitars, African polyrhythms, lithe post-punk basslines, a judicious use of dubby effects, a hint of four-on-the-floor Techno-disco, and even a touch of Cold War Gothic that lends a sense of gravity to the ferocious grooves. “There’s definitely a darkness to this record,” Offer says. “The record just comes out how it will; it’s a reflection of where we were and what we were going through. There are jams we did and it was like, ‘Yeah, this sounds exactly like Berlin. I walked to this basement practice space in my trench coat and this is the music we’re playing and it has that late night Berlin feel to it.’”

The somewhat overcast mood isn’t solely due to the German capital’s gray chill and leftover espionage paranoia, though. After a number of personnel changes, !!! now consists of Offer, guitarist Mario Andreoni, saxophonist/percussionist Dan Gorman, drummer Paul Petrone, and vocalist Shannon Funchess. “The title is like what you would say when half the people in the room walk out and there’s that lull in the conversation and you try to figure out what to say,” says Offer. “It’s also acceptance of change, not a condemnation of anything.”

The group has also had to deal with the shocking death of former drummer Jerry Fuchs, who fell down an elevator shaft in November 2009. “I don’t mind talking about it with anyone,” Offer says. “But I don’t want to talk about it in interviews because so much of what you say just turns into this mechanical thing that you spit out, and I don’t want my memories of him to turn into a soundbite that I can’t feel anymore.”

However, !!! is a closer, tighter unit as a result of these upheavals. Strange Weather, Isn’t It? was co-produced by the band with Eric Broucek, who used to be the house engineer for DFA Records. “Making a record is always a fight with us,” says Offer, “but on this record disagreeing with the producer kind of united us, so we fought less against each other and fought against him… We had this war with Eric: He only likes old synths, and half the band, well actually everybody except me, agrees with him. I like new synths because those old synths were used on New Order records, these new synths no one has used except for someone like Tiesto, but if you don’t use it like Tiesto… But Eric is handy on the old modular synths, so the band pushed that a bit. We used everything we could – MacGyvered it together with a popsicle stick and a rubber band to make it work – and Eric was definitely instrumental in making that happen.”

The result is an album that is richer and more detailed and less spiky than any of !!!’s previous albums. “We’ve learned how to make records better,” says Offer. “In the early days we’d put something deep in the mix, so that kids on acid could hear it the 20th time they listened to it. Everyone wants Eno to produce their record, but he only has time for Coldplay and Paul Simon, so you have to use his adages as your thing. His one big thing is that every idea obscures another. So there was more focus on what was working. It’s fun for us to make something lush.” -Peter Shapiro (2010)