If the mountain won't come to Mohammed and all that...
Turns out The Go! Team were doing their first-ever world tour after selling out multiple shows at South by Southwest and headlining Glastonbury, but Europe's latest indie music darlings weren't planning on coming to Vancouver, so we tracked them down at their nearest stop: Seattle. They had just played Pitchfork's Intonation Festival in Chicago prior to the Seattle show, appearing with the likes of Broken Social Scene, AC Newman and Death From Above 1979.
To date, The Go! Team has been together for less than a year and has just one cd out (Thunder, Lightning, Strike, on Memphis Industries; a US record deal is in the works). This London/Brighton group consists of founder/musician/songwriter Ian Parton, singer/dancer Ninja, and musicians Jamie Bell, Sam Dook, Chi Fukami Taylor, and Silke Steidinger. Parton's idea when forming the band was to experiment with 'slamming together different kinds of sounds next to each other' in a never-before-done sort of way. And that they do!
After a two hour drive down to Seattle, we made our way over to Neumo's. The show started with a kitschy '80s dance act called Fankick! The two dancers leapt and hopped their way through about five pre-recorded 'popular' '80s tunes, enhanced by visual aids such as plastic hoop earrings, leg warmers and a Thigh Master. 'Nuff said.
Next up was a four-man group called The Saturday Knights who had obvious hip-hop leanings. Their first song's chorus went something like this: "If you ain't feeling us/You ain't drunk enough". By the end of that song, I was figuring that I'd be needing to get about two cases of beer into me to make it through their set. However, I was pleasantly surprised by them, as they improved as their set went on - they were a bit uneven at times, but full of humour and certainly showed some promise.
The next band was called The Long Ranger, and was a brother/sister/friend act. Sister was in charge of the laptop, sang a bit and danced; friend played the guitar; and brother sang and danced. We were 'treated' to 40 minutes of pretty similar sounding songs and some fairly repetitive dance moves, and eventually the powers that be at Neumos kicked them off the stage. It was kind of sad, as you could see they were really enjoying themselves and wanted to keep on playing - and playing - and playing - and playing...
Finally, The Go! Team came on - right at midnight. After three acts with no drums, I was starting to go into withdrawal, but The Go! Team fortunately has not one, but two - count 'em: two! - drum kits, so the evening was saved.
This band is hard to classify: are they dance? pop? old school hip-hop? experimental? funk? '60s soul? Northern soul? a grrrl group? all of the above? Their lo-fi sound is hard to categorize, and includes chanting, fragment sampling from 60s-sounding horn sections and plenty of their own instrumentation (In addition to two drum kits [played, at various times, by four different band members] and the requisite guitar and bass, band members also played the melodica, banjo, recorder, bells and harmonica), but whatever the case, this group played a wildly enthusiastic set.
Enough cannot be said about lead singer Ninja. She came on stage and immediately red-lined the show. Not only can this girl sing - she can dance! And dance she does! And dance is what the crowd did, too. I cannot think of any show I've been to - ever - where the audience was truly dancing (not pogoing, not head-bobbing, not swaying - but DANCING!) so much. The whole place was moving and the sweat was spraying everywhere. Ninja had some fun, imitating the dancers in the crowd, but it was done in such a happy, joyful way that everyone was just swept up by the sheer fun of it all.
The Go! Team played most of the songs from their album (Panther Dash, Bottle Rocket and Ladyflash being my faves), and also played about three new songs (including their encore song, at this point entitled 'Untitled' - but this is one song we're going to be hearing again real soon).
Following the Seattle show they were off down the West Coast and from there will be hitting Australia, Japan, and then back to Europe where they will finish off their summer by appearing at the Reading, Leeds and Bestival Festivals in England.
image by www.thegoteam.co.uk/
No comments:
Post a Comment