Sometimes, you just get lucky.
If you had a range of eccentric producers and an ounce of musical talent (or, at least, a boatload of collaborators), you could turn out an album hailed by at least one reviewer as “innovative” and “ahead of its time.” Of course, that reviewer would be me, and therefore, the raves would be relatively unremarkable.
But after listening to the latest album from Brighton pop-menagerie The Go! Team, it’s starting to look like Thunder, Lightning, Strike was just as described above: A mish-mash so difficult to describe, that its unorthodox approach can only be labeled “genius.”
Yet, when you try the trick for a second time, as the band did on their latest album, Rolling Blackouts, the magic doesn’t just fade; it rockets to the bottom and makes audiences wonder what they found so great about it in the first place.
Listening to the debut, it’s not hard to see why critics were so amused. The tracks were a mixture of ’60s pop hooks, indie guitar work, driving horn (yes, horn) sections, old-school rapping and a bunch of kids chanting playground rhymes. It was a whimsical, strange novelty that never seemed absurd enough for a decade that seemed powered on genre crossbreeds. If Danger Mouse and Gorillaz could become household names, why not embrace a group like The Go! Team?
Well, because it was a one-off combination that worked well, not the act of these mixes. The proof is in Rolling Blackouts.
From the opening of “T.O.R.N.A.D.O.” it’s clear that founder Ian Parton would like you to forget that second album Proof of Youth ever happened. The bombastic horn samples enter while frontwoman Ninja does her thing, laying down her upbeat vocal work over the occasionally twisting and jerking samples.
Had we heard it in 2004, it would have been regarded as brilliant. Today, it just sounds like bonus tracks off of Thunder, Lightning, Strike.
The few deviations from the norm (if such a thing can be approximated) are fairly enjoyable. Single “Buy Nothing Day” lays off the wall of sound that other tracks rely on and aims for ’60s pop in its most rarefied and potent form. “Ready to Go Steady” tries the same thing, but fails because of an element that’s present in the former track but not the latter – a distinctly melodic vocal path.
Whereas past The Go! Team tracks rely on an assault of pumping, mobile rhythms and dynamic samples, Rolling Blackouts succeeds when it attempts to craft a sound out of past influences, rather than harvesting lo-fi samples. Title track “Rolling Blackouts” is an example of success in this manner: Sure, it sounds like a rip-off of Sonic Youth with some ’60s infusion, but it doesn’t rely on gimmicks to achieve that sound. The end result is a nice indie rock tune with some perfectly intimate female vocals smoothing the track’s distortion-based hull.
If that had been the entire album, we’d be applauding The Go! Team for its progress rather than its regression. But unfortunately, that is only half the story. Tracks like “Voice Your Choice” are nearly un-listenable with Ninja’s vocals – rap delivered with the deliberate annunciation and force reminiscent of RUN DMC playing reunion shows to a bunch of Yuppies. The combination of nostalgia and gimmickry is ripe for inclusion into the pantheon of “Stuff White People Like.”
Rolling Blackouts is half-indie pop dream, half-mish-mash-retread. As it stands, they’re one step away from becoming something of a New Pornographers Mark II, but their “innovation” seems to be holding them back. As it stands now, their music would serve as a suitable soundtrack for a Japanese video game import, but it’s hard to take The Go! Team seriously otherwise.
2 out of 5 stars
