After almost a decade of shaking his tiny hipster tush during every raucous live performance, Nic Offer is trying to shake up his performance even more.
“The Penguin always seems to be the one where people come up to me and say, ‘I can do your dance! Look!’” explains the singer of the Brooklyn-based dance-rock outfit !!! (pronounced Chk Chk Chk).
“It’s just kind of like my hands out at my sides like wings,” he says of the dance. “I’m always on the lookout so I’ll steal a move from an audience member if I see something good.”
Another favorite of his is a move he dubbed “Running on Ecstasy.” Whether he’s talking about the feeling or the narcotic, we can’t say, but Offer and !!! are definitely keeping it blissful with their latest release, “Strange Weather, Isn’t It?”
The new LP remains true to the amped-up dance-rock scene that first exploded back in 2004. The hoopla has since died down, but Offer is philosophical about no longer being “the next big thing.”
“I fully recognize what happened, and the phenomenon of the hype with this trend has definitely passed. But I don’t notice that there’s not the dance after-parties that we used to go to back then,” he says. “I think it turned from a trend to a viable music form. The thing is, dancing is always a great idea. So to look at it as some sort of trend, that’s really sad. It’s still a great idea to dance.”
