The new looseness that runs through the grooves, the variety the additional voices bring, the very strong songs, and Eno' perfect production all add up as the album plays, and as a result, Thr!!!ler ranks as the band's best work to date.
Goofy and smart in all the right ways, !!! has crafted a record that just puts a big, gaping smile on one’s face and feet a’ shufflin’.
Bottom line, this is a fun, solid output from !!!; a highly enjoyable trip with full cohesion, no true blunders, and at least three standouts on an album with only nine tracks.
Mostly it’s a passable dance hybrid climbing out of the underground and inching toward the mainstream, one wink at a time.
It’s a monster of a dance-punk record, and a fine addition to the !!! canon.
It’s an album which sees the band taking new sounds and crafting songs in new ways. But this tightness and restraint is sometimes to the detriment of the songs.
Rather than opting for an exhilarating sonic adventure, Thr!!!er defaults on ass-slapping, mindless tunes. While the results are at times scintillating, it often feels like a thriller without quite enough killer.
The record treads too close to James Murphy’s six-year-old footprints. Existential nu-disco hasn’t been done to death, but it has been done better than this.
For all of Thr!!!er’s reliable pleasures, the requisite cover-image riff on the triple-bang logo is the boldest idea here, which makes for an awfully modest record to hold up against the pop-canon cornerstone for which it was named.
THR!!!ER has plenty of moments that live up to its self-hyped billing, but it’s the love of the gimmick, that old friend Shtick Shtick Shtick, that will always be the thing that both endears and estranges.
The strongest moments on here are those which are most confident to leap into uncharted waters, as well as those which are equally confident to draw on established strengths.
This is like Franz Ferdinand x Chromeo x Beck. Which sounds like it could be a very inspired and wacky album. At points it is, the grooves are quite danceable and the vocal inflections are quite swanky. Other times, the music just feels like wallflower filler. It’s an okay dance-punk experience.
Also this band had one of the most annoying bands to search up for a long time. How does !!! = Chk Chk Chk??
1 | Even When The Water's Cold 3:47 | |
2 | Get That Rhythm Right 5:05 | |
3 | One Girl / One Boy 4:03 | |
4 | Fine Fine Fine 3:54 | |
5 | Slyd 4:14 | |
6 | Californiyeah 4:34 | |
7 | Except Death 4:37 | |
8 | Careful 5:37 | |
9 | Station (Meet Me At The) 3:51 |