!!! (chk chk chk) @ The Bakery

Tue 3rd Jun, 2008 in Gig Reviews

“What day is it today? Friday? Saturday? It’s Saturday? Well let’s move like it’s a Saturday then!” said Nic Offer of !!! (chk chk chk) after noticing some Perth people were moving less than he was.

The crowd at the Bakery could be forgiven for not keeping up with the unremitting energy and pace of front man Offer. Sometimes dancing like Napoleon Dynamite and other times a dancing dynamo, Offer moved feverishly and consistently for at least 80 minutes during the band’s Perth show at the gold sequinned Bakery; decorated to look like the inside of a vintage glomesh bag for the occasion. !!! are playing the We Love Sounds festival in Melbourne and Sydney and started off their Australian tour in the most isolated capital city in the world.

DJ Rex Monsoon started off the night at 9pm with a combination of 80s favourites that included Gary Numan and Huey Lewis and the News amid disco classics like Donna Summer’s Love to love you baby and new electro beats while the small crowd hugged the bar and sat around the jellyfish on the big screen.

Second support for the night was unsigned Perth locals RATS, who got the slightly bigger crowd moving a little more with their unusual synth-punk sound. Lead vocalist Petro Vouris sang like a Dead Kennedy sans politics and ended the set with punk rock yowling and gagging into the microphone, but the artificial synthetic keyboard effects contradicted the hardcore abrasiveness of the guitars and drums.

“We’re so happy to be here, we’ve only got five songs, ok six songs” said Vouris before their finale. A self-depreciating sense of humour is essential for unsigned bands it seems.

The Bakery was full when !!! made their raucous entry at 11pm. During All my heroes are weirdos, the band threw glow sticks into the crowd, which were then thrown back on stage as the crowd tried to share.

Perhaps when !!! started out in 1996, one of them decided it would be nice if all their friends could be in the band. !!! is famous for its size- 10 members are touring Australia, two more than the usual eight. However, given the tiny stage in the Bakery, only eight made it on stage on the night. During Must Be The Moon, Offer joined three other members in playing drums, cowbell and bongos in between singing. Shannon Funchess, who replaced former vocalist Jerry Fuchs last year after he left to concentrate on his band Free Blood, took turns singing as well as occasionally playing bass and tambourine.

Funchess added another layer of eclecticism to the already multi-coloured !!! sound. Petite but with copious tattoos, a blonde-tipped mohawk and a formidable set of lungs she added a strong female presence to the band’s sound. Funchess and Offer were the main attractions on the night and took turns swinging the microphone stand across their shoulders. Funchess thanked the crowd for braving the rain to see !!!, and then promptly threw the contents of her water bottle over the first few sweaty rows.

Working the crowd is what secured !!!’s reputation as a fantastic live act from New York all across the Pacific. Offer told stories, spoke to members of the crowd, and even got down and danced with a lucky girl at the front of the stage after she asked him nicely. Gripping a bottle of San Pellegrino, Offer retold a case of mistaken identity before the show, where an impatient patron hurried him out of one of the Bakery’s few bathrooms and did not even recognise him as the lead singer, much to Funchess’ amusement.

“So if someone’s in there, taking a shit, it may be the lead singer. I can’t come on stage full of shit,” said Offer, leaving a nice segue for the next song Shit, Sheisse, Merde part one.

There was no encore, instead Funchess and Offer introduced the band’s new drummer, Paul Quattro, and ended the night with their strongest song off Myth Takes, the pulsating, hyperactive, soul-dance ballad Heart of Hearts.

!!! is often called one of the most exciting live acts in the world. Made up of members from Yah Mos, Black Liquorice and Popesmashers, their name was influenced by the subtitles in the 1980 film The Gods Must Be Crazy, which represented the clicking noises made by the Kalahari tribesman with exclamation points. The band’s name can technically be pronounced as any sound repeated three times. Musically, the !!! sound is influenced by everything from 1970s Jamaican dub, guitar soundtracks in spaghetti westerns, African polyrhythms and electro-house bleeps.

With their rave-scene background !!! is used to gauging audience responses and the songs evolve after every show according to reactions of the audiences. Two things are guaranteed for the rest of Australia; the We Love Sounds festival will be all the more exciting with !!! on board, and no two cities will get the same experience.

To see the photos from the night, go Here