!!!: Strange Weather, Isn’t It?

With 2007’s Myth Takes, the ecstatic dance-punk collective !!! came up with an album almost as strong as its best singles and live shows. The group largely holds that stride with its fourth LP, Strange Weather, Isn’t It, a nine-song, 40-minute set that functions as a celebration of rhythm, movement, and macking. The opening song, “AM/FM,” warns, “You can turn up the radio, but you can’t drown out the wind,” and employs a shimmery guitar—halfway between The Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now” and Talking Heads’ “Crosseyed And Painless”—to evoke the sound of static and hot gusts, both of which propel the song’s protagonist forward. Later, songs like “The Most Certain Sure” and “Jamie, My Intentions Are Bass” play with the percussive possibilities of guitar, in club-friendly mixes that pay homage to the mid-’80s 12-inch-single boom. The second half of Strange Weather is sketchier and less inventive, though the whole album has a richly textured sound and a seductive worldview that reduces human endeavor to a pursuit of sexual gratification and the subsequent need to get the hell out of town.