Carl Sandburg Visits Me In A Dream

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.

Listen to “Apollo Throwdown”

Listen to “Ready to Go Steady“

Grab a jump-rope, some colorful tenniboppers and your outdated boombox (the one that only has room for a cassette, please) and don’t forget your copy of The Go! Team’s Proof Of Youth–there’s a party going down. The lo-fi sampling junkies from the UK bring more of their feel-good funkiness and energy to a slew an album that is indeed…youthful.

It seems that in an attempt to be unassuming in their approach to making music, The Go! Team has created another album that has a certain enjoyable flashiness and gaudiness to it that contributes to a feeling that might best be described as pure joy. This is cross-generational goodness jammed into a cut-and-paste package ready made to delight. The lead faux-rap single “Grip Like a Vice” has a certain urgency to it that makes it fresh, while tracks like “Doing it Right” illustrate the band’s knack for catchy rhythms and schoolyard chants. Anthems galore appear on this album as well (“Keys to the City” , “Titanic Vandalism”, among others) that make Proof of Youth more than a juvenile effort. Even more impressive may be the fact that The Go! Team crafted a marvelous sophomore effort in the face of their ever popular debut Thunder, Lightning, Strike. Indeed, lightning does strike twice.

Get yo’self a copy of Proof of Youth!
Listen to “Doing it Right” (4.8/5)
Listen to “Keys to the City” (4.74/5)

The Go! Team–”Grip Like a Vice” (via IGIF)
Everybody’s favorite UK garage-playground band The Go! Team has released the first song off their new untitled album. With all the intensity that appeared on their debut, this song means good things for the coming album. The production is a little cleaner this time around, but still retains that lo-fi sound. Check it, yo.

Josh Rouse–”Sweetie” (courtesy of MOKB)
CSV darling Josh Rouse is releasing a new album Country Moose, City House on July 31st. And every Monday he’s previewing a new song off the album. Last week was “Sweetie” and this week is “Snowy”. So go and listen. Go on.