For club-friendly artists to become or remain relevant on the strength of a single great 12-inch is not unusual, but when the New York-based funk/rock octet !!! kept a prominent finger in the disco-punk pie with merely one song, last year's "Me and Giuliani Down by the School Yard (A True Story)", it seemed an impressive feat. Two years earlier, the band had cut a self-titled full-length that went mostly unnoticed. But by 2001, !!! had latched onto an updated no-wave aesthetic that countless other bands would soon mindlessly mishandle. The featured 10-minute dancepunk epic-- stuffed with more hooks and movements than entire full-length albums-- not only reclaimed the band's reputation, but promised new life to the genre itself. The band's trajectory was the genre's trajectory, and with "Me and Giuliani", !!! and disco-punk began to stray away from safe post-punk skronk, and gradually draw nearer to more adventurous disco sleek.

On Louden Up Now, !!! have progressed toward a slicker, more disco-oriented sound. The band generally forgo the sloppy horn lines and heavy punk riff backbone of their debut, opting instead for slow, trance-like builds. At the heart of the album is a suffocating, dark electro-acoustic disco smog that recalls Black Devil's 1979 Disco Club EP, as well as Larry Levan, Walter Gibbons, and Arthur Russell's more pessimistic contributions to the disco underground. All of which is to say that the production on Louden Up Now is particularly commendable. Over the course of songs such as the first single "Pardon My Freedom", "Shit Scheisse Merde (Part 1)", and album highlight "Hello? Is This Thing On?", the !!! rhythm section boasts not only an adroit shape-shifting timbre, but enough subtlety for close listening.

Louden Up Now isn't all dancefloor thrills, however: !!! smartly dodge pigeonholes and one-trick-pony accusations with some less punchy moves, such as the psychedelic grind of "Dear Can" and the bright but blunted moonbounce of "Theme from Space Island". On "Shit Scheisse Merde (Part 2)", the band even curiously infringe on the drum sampling and sparse rhythmic figures of their sister group Out Hud.

So the production is great, the songbook is varied, and the band is tighter and more ambitious than ever-- the only problem with Louden Up Now is the unfortunate paucity of ideas within the songs themselves. It's as if the equivalent of all of the musical energy of "Me and Giuliani" has been spread over the album's nine other tracks. While Louden Up Now's electronic embellishments are finely mutated, the album sorely misses the huge, nearly anthemic guitar hooks that, to my mind, make !!! so exciting. Also sadly absent from anything other than "Me and Giuliani" are the distinct chapter-like movements of !!!'s longer numbers. On both "Shit Scheisse Merde (Part 2)" and "Dear Can", !!! get caught in a groove and seem hesitant to explore other potential variations or moods.

!!! always flirted with the possibility that they'd fail to fully deliver on the promise of "Me and Giuliani"-- unfortunately, just as a single 12-inch can make a reputation, that track can also serve as a potentially unforgiving benchmark. Louden Up Now contains plenty of good ideas-- as well as two tracks ("Pardon My Freedom" and "Hello? Is This Thing On?") that could soundtrack summer dance parties and net !!! a larger audience. But even when one considers that most listeners are no longer apt to be wowed simply by the concept of dance music with guitars-- and that most of !!!'s audience has come to accept Nic Offer's generally asinine lyrics as an inherent part of the group's unique dynamic-- Louden Up Now is simply not the indie-dance juggernaut many hoped it would be.

-Nick Sylvester, June 8th, 2004