!!!, London Electric Ballroom

!!! (chk chk chk)

July 7, 2009

There’s a sad inevitability to it, but the fact is that any fairly normal white man dancing around a stage is going to end up looking a little bit like Bez. It’s not about the maracas, or the slight paunch, or even the dopey grin and the thousand-yard stare. It’s an association with what a white man dancing looks like which has been irrevocably etched onto my retinas. Bez haunts my waking dreams.

So sorry to the frontman of !!!, but when you preen and pout on stage in your wifebeater and waterproof jacket, I’m thinking not of your deliciously funky moves, but instead of a Mancunian gurning with a pair of maracas.

And that image isn’t the only odd thing about the band known verbally as Chk Chk Chk’s live show tonight: there’s a certain weirdness in choosing to play 50 minutes of uninterrupted brand new material and then making the crowd go wild by ending on three hits and then abruptly leaving the stage and the crowd baying for more.

It would be all too easy to blame some of this eccentricity on personnel changes withing the band: the NYC multi instrumentalists are slimmed down since I first saw them tear a festival stage a brand new arsehole back in 2005. I’m pretty certain the headcount reached double figures then, but my memory is dullened by more than just the passage of time, if you catch my drift. Now, there seems to be just six, and there’s definitely not enough use of the rather sad and lonely looking second drum kit at the back of the stage. The new tracks are strong – it’s the same disco funk pulse, but there’s a subtler, more electronic edge – two of the band stand at the back doing what can only technically called ‘knob-twiddling’ while our Bez-a-like humps speakers, dances and gives the crowd his best come-and-get-some Marc Bolan impression. The problem is that aside from him, there’s little movement in the band. Maybe they’re still getting to grips with the new material, but there seems to be precious little improvement in terms of stage presence from their shockingly flat performance at May ATP. It is better than that, however, as our main man gets in amongst the punters during the extended pysch burn outro of a new track which brings to mind the pulse of ‘Dear Can’ and forces a dance pit of sorts, shaking his thing up against anything that dares get near. But still, that electricity I remember isn’t sparking like it used to: when your frontman is having to gesture to his bandmates to give it some more, the omens aren’t great.

Maybe that’s my ill fortune in catching them at the height of it all: I remember them as a living, breathing party incarnation, with several vocalists clambering over the stage and exhorting the crowd to ever greater feats of terrible last night of the festival dancing.  So in some ways, I think I expect a little too much of them: in my opinion, a great festival set is nigh on unbeatable. I’d rather see a band tear holes in my eardrums and retinas for less than an hour than watch them labour through a longer set of uncertain quality.

But just as I’m about to write it all off as a self-indulgent band practice, !!! throw me a dime. Well, three of them, in the shape of some old tracks. It’s incredible – the crowd come to life and this in turn seems to wake up the band who suddenly remember they’re performing: the bassist leans back and starts to swagger through the galaxy sized bass lick of ‘Must Be The Moon’ and a knob twiddler abandons his post in favour of beefing up the percussion sound. Now we’re rolling, as the saying goes. And then they indulge us with a superb rendition of a track from their debut (I think it was ‘Intensify’ but don’t quote me on that) before finally ending on an absolutely killer ‘Heart of Hearts’. And then, like that, they’re gone, as the £17-a-ticket crowd cheer and whoop before booing when it becomes clear that having wired us all up, they’re going to leave it at that. And I guess that’s !!! for you, when it comes down to it – for better or for worse, you’re left wanting something more from them.

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