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Of all the post-punk bands to come out of England, circa 1979-1983, one stood out from the rest like a sore . . . throbbing . . . lacerating . . . funky-ass thumb. Gang Of Four might never have found the commercial success of their peers, save for their 1982 club/indie-radio hit, “I Love A Man In Uniform,” but the Leeds four-piece’s singularity of vision, virtually absent from their competition, guaranteed them a place of supreme regard in the heads and hearts of hopelessly hip musical elitists, whom, if they didn’t quite get with the group’s Leftist leanings, they sure as shoot got down with their slicing six-string and fat-bottom funk.
Welcome to New York City, circa 2004. Seems the hopelessly hip musical elitists have come out to play. While the past few years have seen a quiet, gradual rediscovery of Gang Of Four (assisted, no doubt, by Rhino Records’ excellent 1998 anthology, 100 Flowers Bloom), that rediscovery has now hit critical mass: national, scene-destroying press; official, soul-destroying nomenclature (“dance-punk”); radio and MTV2 play for local bands such as Radio 4 and The Rapture (the latter of whom also landed a hefty major-label deal with Universal).
And we haven’t even gotten to the “scene’s” flagship band, !!! (pronounced chk-chk-chk), seven Brooklyn locals so hip, one assumes it has to hurt. Back in 2001, !!! grabbed their Gang Of Four inspirations and obscure Euro-dance references, and threw down a self-titled slab of bouncy beats, machete guitar, and synths galore, featuring the inaudible rants of a frontman who frequently compares himself with The Almighty. Last year, they followed this long-player with the 12-inch “Me And Giuliani Down By The School Yard (A True Story),” a ten-minute suite of moods and movements—musical worlds within worlds—that set the standard for all things to come. It was that good.
Which is why anything that comes in its wake is in for a critical beatdown. Not that !!!’s latest offering, Louden Up Now, isn’t good. It is. Very. A cleaner, slicker collection that moves away from art-punk belch and closer to the clean lines and trance-y builds of disco (albeit a dark, ominous disco), Louden Up Now has one goal in mind: to get your damn ass out on the damn dance floor. From the first single, “Pardon My Freedom,” to “Shit Scheisse Merde (Part 1)” and the best thing on the entire album, the seven-plus-minute “Hello? Is This Thing On?” the album ghetto-rolls on rubbery rhythms and horn blasts straight outta the JB’s songbook. And it’s not a one-note affair, either; the psych-sweat of “Dead Can” and the cosmic head-rush of “Theme From Space Island” vary the mood at precisely the right moments. The band is tight, the production understated, the songs ambitious.
But that damn “Me And Giuliani Down By The School Yard (A True Story)” . . . Dropped in at the heart of Louden Up Now, the monster jam is a constant reminder of what the rest of the album fails to achieve: grandeur. What we have here is no doubt a summer-dance classic-in-the-making, but it won’t likely transcend a genre whose limitations are becoming all the more apparent as the months wear on. Good. Very good. Not great. And certainly not grand. Get it?
But, alas, such is the story of scenes—even scenes that build themselves around such lofty role models as Gang Of Four. They’re born to die. In between, they enjoy a brief, brilliant lifespan highlighted by a few notable moments. Occasionally, one of those moments is an album that breaks through the scene’s inherent barriers to become a timeless piece of art. More often than not, though, no such album emerges, not because the moment’s artists are not up to the task, but because such achievements are a überrare confluence of time, place, energy, raw talent, creative spark, and the ability to step back and assess the big picture. Louden Up Now needed to be more than just another good one. It needed to be magnificent. It needed to be bad enough to cut ties with its scene’s cement shoes, grab a nation’s attention, and shake its collective ass.
It’s not. But that’s OK. It’s better than most things you’ll hear all year.
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| —Steven Chean |
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