The Go! Team: superheroes sent to save pop music from the tyrannical power of no-fun. Their secret hideout laboratory is located not far from here, in a blanket fort, in a treehouse, in a playground, on the corner of Beat and Sesame Streets.
And yes, they have a new album. How’s it sound? Well, I kinda just told you. Go read that first paragraph again.
Okay, you want more? Well, it sounds like The Go! Team. Which is to say, like jumprope chants and the dance scene from A Charlie Brown Christmas and mournful trumpet solos from spaghetti westerns and thundering breakbeats and the songs that five-year olds invent when they’re daydreaming, and seventies cop show themes and strumming campfire singalongs and anything else that reminds you of happy times.
And as an album, it’s not much of a departure from their previous, a bunch of crazy sounds meticulously assembled for maximum thrills and giddiness. The first track is a red herring, a little abrasive and in your face and clattery in a way that TG!T normally avoid… But from then on, it’s a million other things, a piano recital, a guitary indie shoegaze-surf tune, a travelogue for Yosemite, a disjointed party rap, a huge crescendoing horn riff, cheerful musical sunshine and tunes galore and childlike wonder and vanquishing the forces of boring self-importance with a fully stocked arsenal of melody and handclaps.
So yeah. It sounds like fun. Thank you, Go! Team, you’ve once again made our world safe to smile like an idiot while listening to records.
[Rolling Blackouts is released on Memphis Industries on February 1st in the US, a day earlier elsewhere.]