Shake the Shudder

As “Dancing Is the Best Revenge” illustrates, !!! are at their best when making dance music that’s both unabashedly celebratory and stridently unsentimental. When the band veer into more typically romantic house terrain (“Our Love (U Can Get)”) and starry-eyed electro-rock (“Throw Yourself in the River”), their peculiar, provocateur personality is muted.

The album also contains enough experimentation and cleverness to stand on its own in !!!'s decidedly confusing and overpopulated sub-genre. [No. 143, p.53]

You’ll gather from this that Shake The Shudder is very much business as usual from !!!, though there is extra spice to their modern disco this time around, an all-inclusive party that gives the middle finger to those who dare to stand in its way. It is a wholly affirmative illustration of music’s unifying power.

The songs are short and punchy, and nod to the anything-goes attitude that pervaded the jams sessions from which they were born.

Some workmanlike settings, but when the vocals spar and catch the tune just right, it all soars with a gospel-like wonder. [Aug 2017, p.100]

While not as refreshing as the previous album, it still feels on occasion as if multiple pop crossovers could theoretically beckon, especially the songs fronted by guest vocalists, including Molly Schnick of early 90s riot grrrls Raooul.

Maybe !!!’s latest effort isn’t revolutionary, but it is rebellious.

Their treacly heaviness still courses through pop cuts. [Jul 2017, p.23]

There’s no reason not to throw on Shake The Shudder and dance it out, but like many fun-yet-hazy late nights, it doesn’t leave much of an impression afterward.

The album’s nitid production weighs down heavily, so much so it induces a fair few flinching moments.

Shake the Shudder is less of an improvement and more of a decline. But while there is nothing really special about it, there is nothing really that bad either, it's just disappointing.