Rolling Blackouts

The Go! Team’s songs are remarkable for being vigorous and optimistic

The English sextet fully justified its igniting name with the release of its debut album Thunder, Lightning, Strike in 2005. The band’s innovative sounding is based on the elements of garage rock, hip-hop, pop-melodies and the female vocalists’ energetic shouting. The fans had been waiting for the story’s continuation for almost three years, and 2007 saw the release of its sophomore effort Proof of Youth which proved even more sparkling and danceable with only two more or less slow songs among the tracks though it was hardly possible to call them ballads. On the whole, each The Go! Team’s song is remarkable for being vigorous, joyful and optimistic, and that probably explains why the audience always goes home from its concerts happy and satisfied. The band has gone all around the world lately visiting Singapore and performing at various festivals in the European countries, recording the new material between the journeys. Today the process of work on the new album which started early last year is finally finished and the brand new pretty album Rolling Blackouts with a colorful cover art has appeared in stores to offer us once again some contagious and careless tracks.

Your mind forgets all its problems and concerns, your body moves with the music

Brass instruments, hitting-the-target combinations of beats and vocal parts in which rapping is interlaced with singing shouting and simple cheering exclamations are the basic components on the album Rolling Blackouts, with just a few exceptions. Thirteen tracks overall last forty minutes during which your mind forgets all its problems and concerns, and your body unwillingly moves with the music. The album opens with the first single T.O.R.N.A.D.O., that fully corresponds to the description. The Roots’ works are combined with the last century’s disco here and wonderful tubes are added to them. The joyful composition Secretary Song takes up this mood and pleases with a pretty female vocal part whereas Apollo Throwdown most of all sounds like a soundtrack of a prom movie when delight and hopes for a happy future fill the soul. A more tranquil song Ready to Go Steady with melodious glockenspiel and guitars takes us back to the 1970s, while Bust-Out Brigade is one of the most vivid, rich and celebrating tracks on the entire album. An unbelievably positive firework of tubes and guitars without any vocals make it a perfect candidate to score the end titles of a new Austin Powers movie. Maximum close to being a ballad is the number Super Triangle, another purely instrumental flow of dreamy happiness. Another danceable song The Running Range prolongs this mood and it seems like it is not going to change until the record’s end when you suddenly hear a nice slightly sad piano melody Lazy Poltergeist, straight from a magic fairy tale. The title track surprises, too – it is the heaviest composition on the album in which distorted guitars meet powerful drums and loud unrestrained vocals.

Hint at something new on Rolling Blackouts

The critics are still not certain whether The Go! Team can be called an indie-pop representative because this collective is surprising with something fresh for the third time now creating it by means of combining things that cannot be combined. This stylistic mixture allows the guys to make incredible things, each album of the English band being the best way to prove that. Yet at the end of the day having found its niche and making sure that there are often people willing to relax and dance to their careless songs the musicians did not reinvent the bicycle working on the material for Rolling Blackouts. At the same time a couple of moments on this record hint at the fact that some changes in the sounding might follow in future, and that the band is softly and unobtrusively preparing the audience for them. Obviously The Go! Team is not eager to run any risk and is acting carefully meeting the fans’ expectations and gradually drawing the attention of new listeners. Three albums with approximately the same music are probably enough even for someone who has invented its own sounding. That is why on the one hand Rolling Blackouts is quite an expected step definitely not devoid of its highlights; on the other hand it may well prove to The Go! Team’s last work of this kind for its capacity is by no means exhausted.