!!!
!!!
[Gold Standard Laboratories]
Rating: 2.0
It's simple to trace the white fingerprints on funk. Long, silly words ending
in "fus" or "pus" and shoulder-length, curly hair signal white funk. !!! avoid
raising these flags but inevitably fall into the same sad traps and dead ends
of virtually every young white musician with a funk streak. In addition to
their apparent quest to frustrate search engines and word-of-mouth channels
with their unpronouncable name, !!! (technically pronouced with three clicks
of the tongue) pay homage to long forgotten Sub Pop bottom-dwellers Big Chief,
a band who believed their hometown of Ann Arbor's proximity to Motown warranted
a indie hardcore/funk revolution. And like Big Chief, !!! come from a hardcore
background, as their label, San Diego hardcore mainstay GSL, implies. Also
like Big Chief, !!! will make one yearn for the halcyon days of white funk
like "True Men Don't Kill Coyotes."
!!! toss around funk stereotypes-- horns, slap bass and high-hat riding-- but
replace the ubiquitous wah-wah with the kind of tick-tock guitar-playing
every Fugazi disciple strives for. Brilliant. It's like making Pillsbury
Confetti Cupcakes with aquarium gravel. Frank Black achieved greater success
in the field with his cover of James Brown's "Mother Popcorn."
There's an air of the increasingly popular "mysterious ensemble" aroused, a
la Godspeed You Black Emperor!, what with the silly name and lengthy, building
passages. In small spurts, when washes of guitar and treated percussion mount
like in "KooKooKa Fuk-U" or when the music borders on electronic in "There's
No Fucking Rules, Dude," Emphatic Ellipsis (as I like to call them) nearly
achieve something of interest. Unfortunately, any potential is brutally
slaughtered by thin production, a horn section modeled after Cake, and one of
the worst singers in recorded history.
!!!'s frontman calls himself "Nic," and warbles retarded Prince-isms like, "I
believe in U and U make me proud/ If it's 2 high, go low, and if it's 2 fast,
go slow" ("The Step") and "Can U feel it intensify/ Can U feel it grow from
deep inside" ("Intensify"). Really, I can't. Unless he's refering to hate.
And this is the root of the white funk problem. The music is built on
preconceptions and tired slogans that suggest insincerity and general
stupidity. Ask yourself what would really make a Caucasian coo, "It don't
hurt 2 dance so shake your ass" in the year 2001? It's a frustrating question
that "intensifies" with each "Uh!" To the children of MTV, funk is just wacky
dance music played by fellows with puffy hair and bellbottoms. That !!!
yearn to recontextualize this for the punk underground belies whatever noble
notions the genre's progenitors began with. The misappropriation of funk
for the sake of irony merely kicks a few more white feet into the corpse of
Sly Stone.
The likely scenario is that !!! throw a hot live show with pelvic thrusts and
silly dancing, which artistic Californian college kids found to be a
lighthearted reprieve from stationary headbobbing. In a deperate attempt to
seem well-rounded, one of them then suggests that !!! are subversive and
brilliant for bringing populist concepts such as "partying" and "dancing"
to art. Next thing you know, !!! get a mention in Spin as one of the
"next big things." And now I have to play town crier and warn you that when
you're playing with white funk, you're going to get songs like "My Name is
Pimp" off albums like Mack Avenue Skull Game. Run to the churches!
-Brent DiCrescenzo