British lo-fi outfit made groundbreaking work with their debut Thunder, Lightning, Strike. A blend of hip-hop, pop, electronic, bossa nova, and 70s elevator music, The Go! Team was bringing something fresh and untapped. The new-found success surely affected their approach to the next critically acclaimed Proof of Youth, as they moved closer and closer towards becoming a one-dimensional hip-hop non-sequitur. Not my cup of tea, but I will readily admit that The Go! Team’s latest Rolling Blackouts is absolutely wonderful.
Strangely nostalgic in its sound, Rolling Blackouts goes back to what The Go! Team does best: refreshing and modernizing older sounds. Take the short “Lazy Poltergeist”, a delicate piano interlude that seems to long for a simpler time when keyboards were all you really needed. Yet not too much earlier on the album, “Apollo Throwdown” takes a harp, an orchestra of strings, lays a backbeat down, on which TGT drops their signature anthemic rap vocals. “Bust-Out Brigade” begins with blaring horns more suited for a 80s cop movie, but this instrumental gets more and more intriguing as layers of xylophone and synthesizers get a hold of it. “Buy Nothing Day” sounds like it might have been ripped right out of a mid-90s pop song, but it works. The Beach-Boys-like “Ready to Go Steady” is perhaps the most joyful song on the album, and if the chorus doesn’t stick in your head for days I’d be surprised.
I could go on, but for the sake of brevity I won’t. So go and grab a copy of The Go! Team’s Rolling Blackouts.
Terrible band name, yes, but they’ve got an insanely catchy song “The Golden Age” featured in a Heineken commercial this past week. The song is actually a couple years old, but there’s no time limit on an awesome track.
I’ll admit I’ve never the biggest fan of TV On the Radio. I thought they were getting accolades for doing nothing but putting out lo-fi esoteric sounds. That said, I’ll never turn down a great song. “Will Do” comes off of TV on the Radio’s 5th LP Nine Types of Light. It begins with a bluesy twinge, as twinkling ivory trickles in ever so slowly, only to be perfectly complemented by a slow pulsating bass line.
Note: Best wishes to Gerard Smith, bassist/keyboardist for TV on the Radio, who was recently diagnosed with Lung Cancer.
Carl Sandburg Visits Me In A Dream will serve as a blog for me to share my thoughts and musings, with a special emphasis on music. The music that will appear in this blog is for evaluation/sampling purposes only, and is designed to promote up and coming bands. Remember, if you like the artist(s), buy the CD! If you are the owner of a sound file and would like it removed, please contact us and we will kindly take it down.