The Go! Team keeps old flavor

The band's predictable but original style is music for the masses.

By Joey Vergara

Published Aug. 28, 2007

It's easy for bands to wear their influences on their sleeves without a second thought. To create something new while bringing in a diverse group of inspirations takes a wholly different approach.

Enter The Go! Team.

Although sampling is a staple of the British group's pop gems, the originality layered on each track is both irresistible and impressive.

Guitarist and songsmith Ian Parton's open-minded goal to encapsulate his love for all kinds of music succeeds well beyond expectations.

The band is neither a simple tribute to, nor a mash-up of, '90s post-rock guitars, the '70s zeal and celebration of life or uninspired indie rock, but an imaginative escape from the routine.

The upcoming album, Proof of Youth, serves as a great companion piece to 2004's Thunder, Lightning, Strike.

It's close enough to the band's debut to please any indie purist's hopes and continues Parton's somewhat sloppy exploration of combining seemingly unmixable musical ingredients into the catchiest jams since the disco era.

The '70s cop show theme song sound-a-likes from Thunder, Lightning, Strike return in the form of "Grip Like a Vice" and the more aggressive "Titanic Vandalism." On the latter track, after Sonic Youth-esque guitars raise momentum, horns take the lead melody while vocalist/rapper Ninja lays down multi-tracked double-dutch chants with pure bravado.

After nearly four minutes of mounting pressure, the song ends as abruptly as it began.

"Keys to the City" flitters between a down-tempo soulful jam with creeping guitars and another reason to dance nonstop.

Again, gang vocals provide much of the thrill for this band that always follows its own unusual lead.

When not ramming energy down listeners' ears, The Go! Team balances the album with calmer pieces like "My World" and "I Never Needed it Now So Much."

The former track is a low-key, if repetitive, break from the more recognizable Go! Team sound.

The other brings back the Charlie Brown-esque piano and drummer Chi Fukami Taylor's monotonous child-like singing.

It's a different side of The Go! Team's sound that, while providing a much needed respite from the break-neck speed of the majority of their songs, fails to really do much else.

The problem with Proof of Youth lies not in its schizophrenic pace that might be too much for some listeners, but in the times when the songs begin to blend together, sounding so familiar you begin to expect the outro's triumphant horn wails from the very first notes.

Even if "Flashlight Fight" features Public Enemy's Chuck D, it still sounds exactly like any given number of songs from the group's catalogue. The diversity on Proof of Youth begins to sound too calculated, taking away some of the fun from the otherwise great record.

As it turns out, there really are limits to The Go! Team's formula for spontaneity.

On the bright side, The Go! Team is music for the masses in the finest sense: unpretentious, exciting and so universally appealing that hipsters and cheerleaders alike should be drooling over this record in no time.