The Go! Team
Thunder, Lightning, Strike
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The Go! Team
Thunder, Lightning, Strike
Memphis Industries, 2004
RiYL: Spiritualized, The Polyphonic Spree, Junior Senior |
The group was called Junior Senior, and that summer its anthem, "Move Your Feet," stuttered its way up the U.K. charts and into one-hit-wonder history. Sure the song was repetitive, sure its hooks were familiar and cobbled together, but it had that certain something. When it came on the radio in the summer of 2003, you got infected, you let the wound fester, and you liked it.
The Go! Team has forged new ground in that kind of preposterously exuberant dance music with its debut, Thunder, Lightning, Strike. It has improved on Junior Senior's formula by leaving out decorations like sampled vocals begging for rhythmic foot movement, though it has remained no less toe-tapping. Indeed, it has left vocalized lyrics of any kind almost completely behind in favor of beats, organs, wind noises, harmonicas, strings, and some soulfully upbeat but indecipherable chanting. Thunder, Lightning, Strike is the soundtrack to the kung-fu surfer movie starring Sesame Street characters that never got made.
The album really is comically cinematic. "Ladyflash," in particular, contains some cheerily frantic moments (where our puppet heroes might be surfing away from puppet villains), interspersed with some cheerily melodic and soft moments (where our puppet heroes might exchange a wry shrug after narrowly skating through some craaaaazy hijinks). This is dance music for the ironically and self-consciously absurd hoping to graduate into genuine absurdity. This is dance music for the brightly-costumed.
Thunder, Lightning, Strike is also startlingly lo-fi. Its fuzziness and lack of clarity is charming at first, but gets a bit tiresome in the middle of the horn flourishes on "The Power is On," "Junior Kickstart," and "Huddle Formation." Perhaps with a bit more sonic fidelity, those songs wouldn't all sound quite so similar.
Lo-fi isn't close to the same as bad, though, and Thunder, Lightning, Strike is, in the end, irresistible. Its sense of humor is evident even in song titles like "Feelgood by Numbers" and "Friendship Update." Even "Huddle Formation," a track towards the end of the album that starts out sounding like several of its predecessors, devolves into a bouncy and cacophonous chant of punchy rock.
"Everyone's A V.I.P. To Someone" is a fitting coda to this whole mess. It starts out with some pensive banjo picking, resolves into a soothing organ and string refrain, and builds into a pounding crescendo before fading out. It is the most, well, organized song on Thunder, Lightning, Strike, probably a fitting transition back to the relative order of real life.
JEFF GRAY | Jeff Gray used to be an important mover and shaker in Chicago, but gave all that up to live on a beach in rural Hawaii. You'll notice him if you're there, he's the one who's very tall and a little bit sunburned. His musical tastes tend towards the mainstream -- Phish, Radiohead, The Strokes -- but he'll argue to the death that those bands are mainstream because they're 100% awesome. Jeff's always on the lookout for the next great pop song, tidbits about Michigan football, and 80's action movies on cable.