Album Review: !!! - Strange Weather, Isn't It? (Warp)  Chk Chk
Chk The dry, shiny production styles and musical bent of the
'80s has become something of an over forested plot of land over
the last year or so. Bands from both sides of the Atlantic
proudly flaunt their scratchy copies of Combat Rock and Some
Great Reward while claiming their cassette dubs of Rhythm Nation
1814 are there for irony's sake. Their attempts to pull us into
a new neon-tinted age have by and large been poor facsimiles of
their above-referenced influences. But some bands, like the
loose-limbed disco funk collective !!!, take that 30-year-old
template, improve upon it, and leave a string of party anthems
in their wake.  Their latest album finds the octet in that
glorious sweet spot between loose and taut, the perfect place
for a groove-driven band to be in. What helps is that they are
allowing much more space to open up in their songs than ever
before. The rubbery pulse of "Steady as the Sidewalks Crack" and
the crackling beats that dri