Product Description

Lodged somewhere in the previously undiscovered zone where Sonic Youth meets The Jackson 5, The Go! Team's Mercury Music Prize nominated debut album Thunder, Lightning, Strike kicked out the jams and then spread it on crumpets for tea. The Go! Team is a 50/50 boy multinational girl boy split: band leader Ian Parton on electric guitar, harmonica and drums, Sam Dook on electric guitar, banjo and drums Chi Fukami Taylor on drums, Silke Steidinger on drums, electric guitar, keys and melodica and Jamie Bell on bass, and dynamite mcing from pocket rocket Ninja. That's right, there's four drummers - eat your heart out Adam and the Ants.

On record The Go! Team are the Uncle Bulgaria's of pop music, making good use of things everyday folk leave behind. Throwing together electro, 70's cop show theme music, Bollywood soundtracks, cheerleading chants, old hip hop and noise guitar bands with a wide-eyed sense of possibility where everything crashes into everything else with a breathless, delighted, abandon. The Go! Team seem to be suffering from a collective brain-wrong that is gloriously, euphorically right. This special edition features two bonus tracks, "We Just Won't Be Defeated" and "Hold Yr Terror Close".

Track Listing

1. Panther Dash
2. Ladyflash
3. Feelgood By Numbers
4. The Power is On
5. Get it Together
6. We Just Won’t Be Defeated
7. Junior Kickstart
8. Air Raid Gtr
9. Bottle Rocket
10. Friendship Update
11. Hold Yr Terror Close
12. Huddle Formation
13. Everyone’s a VIP to Someone

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3812 in Music
• Released on: 2005-10-03
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
The Go! Team's piecemeal approach to music-making and their zest for block-rocking party sounds makes for an interesting sonic jumble. This re-release of Thunder, Lightning, Strike, their 2004 debut album, features several modifications from its original incarnation due to US licensing laws (a new verse from MC Ninja and two new tracks), but the changes are largely cosmetic: the album remains a belligerent brew of guitars, drums, old-school hip-hop, rock, harmonicas, banjos, flutes, rhymes and cheerleader-chants that illustrates the band's famous anything-goes attitude. From the audacious assault of pop-tastic tracks like "Panther Dash" and the cartoonish rumble of "Feelgood By Numbers" to the jump-around anthem "Get It Together", the incessant - and sometimes overwhelming - joie-de-vivre of the document remains unrivalled by anything their contemporaries has produced in the meantime. --Paul Sullivan

Customer Reviews

A Fantastic, fun, album
I didn't really know this band before purchasing this album, so I was taking a bit of a risk, but I'm so glad I did, as it's simply fantastic.

Unlike most bands these days, The Go! Team have their own unique sound, and it's certainly a sound I like. It's hard to describe what they sound like, as they seem to manage to fuse so many genres so seamlessly, taking influences from pop, rock, indie, punk, hip-hop, big beat and more. I just wish there were more bands that sounded like them - even if that does contradict my praise of their uniqueness a little.

It's a really fun album, packed full of enjoyable catchy tracks. After buying it I just listened to the tracks over and over again. I've just noticed they have a new album out, and will be purchasing it ASAP.

Perfect pop
Not too much to add to some of the ecstatic reviews below; other than to say that the 'production' criticised below is well-nigh perfect. Live they are astonishing, and it is miraculous that the production captures some of that. Live, the songs can take on a more chaotic jamminess, but on record every song is of a perfect length.

This is pop music at its most wonderful and beautiful, so intensely of the moment that it equally aches with the joy and sadness of life.

It's a great tribute that every listener hears such different gems within this sound--I hear playground chants, tighten up, the friends of distiction, mo tucker, josie and the pussycats meets the velvet underground through a punk version of shangri-las blasting be young be foolish be happy out your car window on a gorgeous summer day as you drive with your gang and your girl and the cops'll never catch you as lonnie smith or beat at cinicitti play in the background. Sorry, no, that's not even the half of it.

What a plucking banjo! 2-4-6-8! Rocking your microphone! Ninja is a superstar, she is my heroine. The fragility of 'Hold Your Terror Close', and the perfect finish of 'Everyone's a VIP to Someone'. If you love music and cherish life, you must have it.

Dammit, it's happened again. Words fail me...

Poor sound quality
I saw this band on the Glastonbury 2007 highlights. Bought 'Bottle Rocket' on iTunes and thought Apple had messed up the sound quality. When I got the CD it was exactly the same. I found the sound is so bad it is totally unplayable. To me it sounds like an MP3 on the lowest bitrate. Obviously I'm in a minority 'cos everyone else seems to have given the CD 5 stars without comment on the production. So, my advice is give it a listen on iTunes first. Hopefully you'll think I'm wrong and the sound is fine and you'll buy the CD because the Go! Team are a good band.