There can’t be a whole load of acts – of those that are active contemporarily, at least – who you’d be readily willing to watch on two consecutive evenings, but Sacramento rogues !!! have proven themselves to be just that on multiple occasions. Personally speaking, this is the second on which I’ve had the pleasure of indulging in Nic Offer & Co.’s live show – one which is as impressive as said agent provocateur’s performance is trademarkedly irrepressible; something that he finds to be “the easiest part” on both nights – twice in this short a timescale. However, with theirs continuing to enrapture with all the élan of those of Luke Jenner et al. once upon some while ago, it’s no wonder the rabbles of London have been roused into action, nor is it a hardship to have to shimmy through two stereotypically, almost mythically electrifying nights in the company of the exuberant Californians. “You know how it is with London: you can only come when you’re hot. And we’re hot, so here we are” says Offer on night one, perspiring truly profusely as he does so; and on such compelling form as this, he’s not far wrong…

While members may well have come and gone down the years and along the line, !!! have now been a going concern for somewhere in the somewhat nebulous vicinity of twenty years; not bad going for a band frequently, and frequently unfairly, cast aside as a parodical lampoon of post-punk, and the carefree freedom of form so often associated with the genre. “To me, post-punk means to find something different”, proffers Offer a couple of hours prior to showtime tonight. “Punk said, ‘Be yourself’, but then said, ‘Be yourself, but be exactly like this.’” He thus perceives the aforesaid genre – or that with the requisite hyphen – to equate to taking “what was best about punk, and seeing what you could make. So to me, there was a commitment to creativity; to make something that had never been made before.”

A spirit as much as a style, Offer reckons !!! have not only retained this “commitment to creativity,” but have also “kept the attitude” that is more integral than merely incidental to post-punk; and it’s for these reasons that “to wallow in the hits is not what we wanna do. And we have such a legendary live show because we’re not just playing the hits; we’re expressing ourselves. That’s why we’re good!” he smirks impishly, if not impertinently.

But whether this should be on record or when, if not whenever seen onstage, it’s hard to argue with how “good” a group !!! have become. Because from Sick Ass Moon right through to a maniacal take on I Feel So Free (Citation Needed) – reminiscent of every one of Azari & III, Hall & Oates, Hot Chip and deep, dirty Chicago house in equivalent measure – !!! go all the way. “You feel shitty if you’re not giving it [your] all” Offer reveals, in what is not exactly the most revelatory of divulgations, but their dedication to the cause proves irrefutably admirable to the day, or indeed the nights…

But what of their cause? Well: “You have to push yourself into strange territory; that’s our basic, creative motto. ‘Let’s be in a strange place, let’s get it wrong; let’s fuck it up, and call it a song’” Nic offers, and there can of course be absolutely no refuting how wonderfully fucked-up the likes of All the Way and All U Writers sound on both nights. The former recalls the uninhibited naffness of It’s Album Time, or nascent Metronomy fed through a prismatic mangle of ecstasy, strobing lights, dry ice and deep cuts; while the latter – “a nudge, nudge; wink, wink” to reviewers everywhere, whether keen or unkind – taps back into the funkily louche nous and slouch of, say, Louden Up Now.

“Some of the best rock writers, ever, are writing right now” by Offer’s reckoning, and while there have been some more positive appraisals of their latest, As If, than the humdrum, run-of-the-mill rubbish published by the NME recently, opinion is pretty apparently split regardless. “People are into the new stuff” Offer nonetheless contends with a certain nonchalance, with this perception seemingly inspiring the paucity of “stuff” from albums such as Louden Up Now on not one, but two nights in central Hackney. A record he and the rest of the band had “thought would be better,” if All the Way may be “as weird, [if not] weirder than anything” on said release, then commensurate wonder can be found in songs such as the libidinous, falsetto-led Bam City, or the jazz-handed Freedom! ’15, during which Offer – chicken-skinned in nothing but the October cold, short-sleeved shirt and even shorter trunks – brings his rakish cabana boy shtick to the forefront in every regard feasible. Physically primarily, although what with him being “pretty sure that As If is the[ir] dirtiest,” this probably makes sense, essentially.

But when studying the essentials, it becomes clear that !!! are themselves, at long last, becoming the band they always wanted to be. “We view pop as the framework, and then we colour it” Nick confirms, when quizzed on their increasingly accessible, direct and disco-bedaubed, more recent endeavours such as As If, and THR!!!ER before it. But when asked to compare the varying contrasts between now and rather less recent endeavours, such as their eponymous début album and, again, Louden Up Now, he recalls: “[Disco] was what we were trying to do in the first place, but then I think in the first place, we were too ‘punk’. That’s what we wanted Louden Up Now to sound like,” hence their collective disappointment at the time of that particular record’s original release, “so disco was kinda like a foundation.

“When we started playing [as !!!], there was a certain contingent of punk fans, and fans of my old band [The Yah Mos] who were like, ‘What’s this fuckin’ disco shit?’ [But] to be ‘punk’ is to do what you wanna do, so to be ‘dance-punk’ is to do what you wanna do, and put a kick drum underneath it!” And if it’s “quiet out [t]here without a kick drum”, as per I Feel So Free (Citation Needed), then rarely is there even so much as a muted minute, nor minutia, on either night. For incontrovertibly “raw,” worthy of yours and my time likewise, and certainly in no way ‘ploughing into a rut’, I, for one, can now only pray to the same God that Offer thanks for their neglecting to celebrate their meaningful anniversaries that they do so one day; one day when they’ve come to realise just how seminal an album Louden Up Now was, and remains today. In the meantime, mind, their disco-pian escapades will simply have to do; and, so far as latent fears of the money running out go, As If…