Is it possible to sound like you're having more fun than The Go! Team? Probably not, going on Proof of Youth, the second album from Brighton's brightest pop experimentalists. As on its predecessor, 2004's Thunder, Lightning, Strike, the eleven songs of Proof of Youth burst out your speakers like tangy pop bubblegum, but on closer inspection, suggest a broader, braver web of influences; many bands can remind you of the chirpy soul singalongs of The Jackson 5, the metallic guitar clang of Sonic Youth, or the cut-and-paste sonic collages of Public Enemy's The Bomb Squad, but only one can do it in a single song. "Grip Like a Vice" and "Titanic Vandalism" prove The Go! Team template is present and correct, joyful melanges of car-chase horns, double dutch vocals, melodic guitar, and crowd-hyping rapping from MC/cheerleader Ninja. But there's more here than formula. "My World" is a simple, pretty interlude of acoustic guitar, shaker, and synthesiser straight from some Look Around You-style 1980s science show, "I Never Needed It Now So Much" is a naïve pop song featuring vocals from Solex, and the glorious "Flashlight Fight" is a Public Enemy pastiche that actually features Chuck D. Skill. --Louis Pattison
Review by Tim Sendra
The Go! Team burst onto the indie scene a couple years ago like the proverbial breath of fresh air, their built on samples schoolyard chants and TV theme rockers made most everything else sound gray and a little timid in comparison. Thunder, Lightning, Strike was a brilliant record and Proof of Youth can't help but suffer when stacked up against it. Indeed, it might take a spin or two before you can shake the feeling that you're listening to outtakes from Thunder, Lightning, Strike but once you do the album reveals itself to be another, though slightly lesser, stroke of greatness. Rather that relying heavily on samples this time out, bandleader Ian Parton goes with a live band with samples blended in approach. It results in a slightly more organic, but still a recognizably Go! Team, sound. Meaning that the master tapes were dragged behind a car for a couple of miles, then dipped in wool and left out to melt in the hot, august sun. The resulting tinny and muddy mess may be enough to give audiophiles the hives but to any one else it's an exciting mess that fairly explodes out of the speakers in a hissy rush of sound. The drums pound, the horns blare, the guitars wail and clatter, the vocals shout to be heard; it's a whirling fun house of music and fun. Which would be enough to recommend the album but the songs themselves are strong and equally as impressive. Grip Like a Vice which features beamed in from the early 80s raps from female pioneers Lisa Lee of Cosmic Force and Sha Rock from Funky Four Plus One, is the equal of anything on Thunder, Doing It Right has lovely verses sung by guitarist Kaori Tsuchida to match the instantly hooky chorus, I Never Needed It Now So Much is a indie pop ballad sung sweetly by Elisabeth Esselink (also known as Solex) and Patricia's Moving Picture shows a sensitive and melodic side the group would be wise to investigate in the future.
Taking the place of the samples on Proof of Youth are many guest appearances. Along with Solex's appearance, Marina from Bonde Do Role sings on the stomping Titanic Vandalism and Universal Speech, two rap crews from opposite ends of the age spectrum (day care cuties the Rappers Delight Club and real old-school jump roping rappers the Double Dutch Divas) are on board and Chuck D. of Public Enemy raps on Flashlight Fight. Only the latter guest spot feels like a gimmick. Chuck D.'s rap isn't as bad as his Kool Thing misadventure but it sounds wildly out of place next to Ninja's exhortations and the old-school lightheartedness that prevails elsewhere. No doubt the idea of working with one of their heroes was a thrill for the band but the album would have been better off without the song. One mis-step isn't enough to ruin things though and if you can forgive them basically making the same album again, Proof of Youth is a pretty spectacular continuation of some of the most exciting, innovative sounds around. Next time they'll have to stretch some but for now the Go! Team are doing it right.
The Go! Team
Proof of Youth
[Sub Pop; 2007]
Rating: 7.2
For every artist that starts out with a solo home-recording project, hitting the road circuit can present a problem: It necessitates the recruitment of other musicians, a reworking of overdubs and sample-laden material for live performance, and a general shift away from the original plot. After a couple of hundred shows and radio sets, these adjustments can become part of the artist's musical DNA, redirecting all future work away from those lonely, antisocial earlier days, and towards a crowd-pleasing, stage-translatable compromise.
The Go! Team know this challenge well: After Thunder Lightning Strike became a surprise hit on both sides of the Atlantic, auteur Ian Parton found himself with a demand for a live version of his kitchen-sink project. By the end of 2006, he'd played every festival from Austin to Australia with his merry crew, slowly evolving from shy, nervous rookies to seasoned party-rock veterans, with the multimedia backdrop and headbands to prove it. When Parton found himself ready to record album #2, he likely discovered that his band was nothing like where he'd left it on his debut; for one, there were a lot more people in it.
In reaction, Parton seems to have overcompensated for these changes, turning Proof of Youth into more of a sequel that replays the Thunder Lightning Strike formula rather than allowing the new personnel to push the Go! Team mission in a new or different direction. That decision brings both pros and cons with it: On one hand, the Go! Team sound remains a pretty singular blend of unlikely sonic companions, but revisisting that approach risks hitting the bottom of the creative well.
First single "Grip Like a Vice" is the thesis statement to Proof of Youth's copycat philosophy: It instant-replays the template of "The Power Is On", staccato playground chants and roller-rink organ building to sports-highlight fanfare and caustic guitar peaks. It's a relief, at least, to hear that the addition of non-sampled vocals-- most courtesy of rapper Ninja-- hasn't changed Parton's approach to production: Her words are still low and faded in the mix, as if he recorded her, pressed it to vinyl, and then sampled it just to maintain his aesthetic. "Grip Like a Vice" isn't the only "Power" clone, though it's probably the best: "Titanic Vandalism" and "Keys to the City" find diminishing returns as the novelty of the approach wears thin.
The other welcome news is that the guest-star buddies that the Go! Team have accumulated don't do much to break up the gameplan either, as appearances by Bonde do Role's Marina Ribatski, the Rapper's Delight Club kids, and the Double Dutch Divas fade right into the grainy mix. Only Chuck D stands out: "Flashlight Fight"'s paranoid sirens and clattering drums hearken back to the Bomb Squad's urgent soundscapes.
While the kid-chants-as-hip-hop-maneuver bit starts to show signs of staleness on Proof of Youth-- even in spite of the album's guests-- other aspects of the Go! Team's philosophy provide more replayable highlights. "Fake ID" is less old-school rap pastiche than twee indie-pop given a supercharged engine, with glockenspiel and child-like vocals propelled by fuzz bass and Parton's voluminous drums. "Doing It Right" shuffles those poppier elements into the jump-rope rhyming and horns template, intercutting the proto-rap with a dreamy chorus. But would it kill the band to include a few more instrumental interludes like the Alan Parker cover "My World", which offer a welcome relief from the frenetic pace while sucker-punching memories of Sesame Street Super-8 interludes and weird Morricone-knockoff cartoon scores?
Those quieter moments may have been the necessary sacrifice to the Go! Team's new extrovert status, and if so, it's a fair but troubling tradeoff. Proof of Youth mostly recaptures the enthusiasm and unique sensibility of Thunder Lightning Strike, further filling that niche for lo-fi sample-based old-school-noise-rap we never knew we needed filling. But in retracing his earlier steps, Parton is beginning to flirt with the dangerous point where a thrilling new sound becomes a one-trick pony, allowing the band to drift more towards exclusively making the kind of music that plays big on stage.
-Rob Mitchum, September 12, 2007
http://www.myspace.com/thegoteamThe Go! Team
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