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!!!, MOVING UNITS
ME AND GIULIANI DOWN BY THE SCHOOL YARD , S/T
(TOUCH & GO), (RX/PALM PICTURES)
Stars graphics

Ever since the Rapture’s "House of Jealous Lovers" united NYC disco rats and indie-clubbers last summer as one nation under a groove, the city’s musical milieu has been revived by a single imperative: make rock and roll you can dance to. It might be the best thing to have happened to underground music in a decade. The best new song about dancing in New York is "Me and Giuliani Down by the School Yard," by !!! (pronounced Chk-Chk-Chk), a seven-piece unit who are kicking up the funkiest no-wave racket since James Chance. The secret weapons on !!!’s fabulous homonymous debut were guitarist Mario Andreoni’s taut, ticklish, J.B.’s-style stress, which was stretched out over epic Afro-punk/funk polyrhythms, and a horn section equally familiar with John Zorn and Fred Wesley. On "Me and Giuliani," the groove somehow is both looser and sharper; the percussion includes both cowbell and electrobeat; and in its middle section the song swirls into trippy dub ecstasy before paddling its way back to shore. Frontman Nic Offer’s jaundiced, Strummer-like howls and hisses chide the former mayor (and the current one, too) like a griot calling out a sub-Saharan dictator: "We live here and now, dude . . . so get on down, down, down." It’s as if Afrika Bambaataa had unpacked a crate of Fela Kuti sides for a block party in the concrete jungle of Factory Records–era Manchester. And like "House of Jealous Lovers," the song is actually climbing the Billboard dance charts. Which is poetic, since it’s also the first dance-punk song to point out that dancing is legally discouraged in New York City by a regulation that requires permits in bars where rump shaking might occur. The obvious parallel is a certain ’80s story line made famous by Kevin Bacon and Lori Singer; by the end of the track, !!! are leading a chant you never dreamed you’d hear on a Touch and Go record: "Everybody cut/Everybody cut/Everybody cut footloose!"

LA’s Moving Units were among the first to export NYC’s no-wave/new-wave revival to the West Coast, and they were quickly snatched up by Palm on the basis of this four-song EP. You can hear why: it sounds like what might’ve happened if the DFA — the production team responsible for putting the proto-house thump in "House of Jealous Lovers" — had kidnapped the Strokes. On "I Am," the best of the lot, they prove they’ve mastered the basics of the form: a liquid, syncopated disco bass line and wiry, staccato Gang of Four guitar strangulation. It’s a little by-the-numbers, though, and their singer, with an affected English accent, sounds as if he’d be happier in a form that’s more earnest and less trendy. "I am ordinary," he sings drily in the chorus, as if waiting for us to disagree. I don’t, and he is.

(Moving Units open for Blur at Avalon this Friday, July 18; call 617-423-NEXT. !!! play the Middle East this Sunday, July 20; call 617-864-EAST.)

BY CARLY CARIOLI


Issue Date: July 18 - 24, 2003
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