Luckily, although previously penned to support the Red Hot Chili Peppers at a horrible festival designed to suck the money out of your pocket and the life out of your body, !!! played a normal club date with no superfluous pop groups. Instead of standing in a field with a bunch of people wondering who “Three exclamation marks” are, the night was spent dancing to !!!’s funky beat.
When !!! came on stage I was very surprised to see eight people (plus a female singer for one song) march out of the little side door, I always had the notion that they were a three or four piece. They opened their set with two new songs. The first was named “Heart of Hearts” and I couldn’t catch what the second was called. Unfortunately, I had positioned myself at the stage right in front of Mario Andreoni’s large amp so for most of these two songs all I could hear was his playing. He was great and from what I could get from the rest of the band sounded promising. The audience were certainly digging it.
As I moved back into the crowd to get a more balanced mix, !!! kicked into “Pardon my Freedom” and had the audience eating out of their hands (and swearing in unison). At the end of it I thought the peak of the performance had been reached but “Dear Can” proved me wrong. After these two familiar songs, !!! revealed three more new songs. All three were of equal or better quality to everything the band has put out before. The new material doesn’t stray far from !!!’s signature sound, it’s unlikely to convert anyone who doesn’t like what they’ve heard before but equally it doesn’t sound like their forthcoming album is going to be just more of the same.
The set closed with “Me and Giuliani down by the Schoolyard” and “Intensified” with Gorman and Wilson let loose on their brassware. The saxophone and trumpet suit !!! perfectly, they cut through the rest of the instruments and work with all the vocals to add an extra sheen of ecstasy to the songs. The show finished with the band looking like they’ve had a good time and the audience looking exhausted from all their dancing. An encore would have been nice but I think I would have needed to lie down immediately afterwards.
