Brighton sextet,
The Go! Team have always been one for combining a myriad of genres. Their mix of soul, funk, old school hip hop, noise pop, Bollywood soundtracks, indie, garage rock, and playground-style chanting has always left them floating between genres, unable to be pigeonholed or labelled. They’ve supported acts as diverse as My Bloody Valentine to Kevin Shields, and have been commissioned to remix tracks for Hot Chip and Bloc Party. The Go! Team utilise both live instruments and samples in their tracks, and despite Ninja, Tsuchida and Fukami-Taylor taking the majority of vocals, the band have enlisted many guest vocalists on past albums.
It is now a whole seven years since
The Go! Team’s full-length debut album Thunder, Lightning, Strike, was released, receiving widespread critical acclaim, comparisons to the likes of Simian Mobile Disco, 2 Many DJs and Soulwax, and a rather tasty Mercury Prize nomination. Can new effort, the notoriously difficult third-album, Rolling Blackouts, attain the same level of success?
Guest vocalists on this album include Deerhoof’s Satomi Matsuzaki on the exceedingly poppy
Secretary Song, a track best suited to an image of happy teenagers skipping along the beach in a polkadot bikinis in fast forward and sepia, and Best Coast’s Beth Cosentino on
Buy Nothing Day, a slightly more laid back and surfer-esque effort, diverting from the band’s usual zany and outlandish eccentricities, probably due to the slight drawl of Cosentino’s vocals.
The discordant and Beastie Boys-esque opener,
T.O.R.N.A.D.O. is exceedingly frantic and features the distinctive rap vocals of Ninja. Jolly and shimmery
Apollo Throwdown appears to be reminiscing the Seventies, and could easily have been produced by Justice. Fourth track,
Ready to Go Steady has distinct echoes of breezy, dreamy and slightly hazy 60s pop, whilst the Brass-heavy and completely juxtaposing instrumental track
Bust-Out Brigade could be a piece of film music.Seventh track, the twee and oddly relaxing Super Triangle is arguably the first instance the listener will get to take a breath in the whole record. The more mellow and dreamy atmosphere now established continues with
Voice Yr Choice.
Yosemite Theme provides a tribute to one of the pioneers of hip-hop and duck rock, Malcolm McLaren.
The Running Range is a more guitar heavy track, enlisting the help of more brass stabs and heavy percussion. Slightly out of place piano solo,
Lazy Poltergeist commands a moment of reflection, and perhaps confusion, before the album launches into the
Rolling Blackouts, which arguably sounds the most like a ‘pop song’, with guitar riffs aplenty and hazy vocals reminiscent of Emily Haines. The album concludes with modern day fused with the Sixties track,
Back Like 8 Track, highlighting that The Go! Team won’t confine themselves to a specific genre, or indeed a specific era.
Ian Parton, the band’s principle songwriter has described Rolling Blackouts as ‘the most eclectic record we’ve done. It’s all over the shop’. It has also been hinted that this will be the last effort from the band. The difficult third album has been an interesting and chaotic whirlwind of tracks (thirteen in just forty minutes!), and if the band do decide to part ways, they have done so with an album that defies the norm with their continually different and captivating approach to orchestration and songwriting. The infectious hand-clapping, sunshine, and optimism that exudes from this album by the bucket-load is almost impossible to dislike, despite the slight uneasy feeling that you’ve heard it all before.
