The Go! Team have long been a band obsessed with making gleeful noise. 2004's debut Thunder, Lightning, Strike set a blueprint for the band and mastermind Ian Parton: stitch together catchy songs out of samples and live instrumentation with a result that sounds a lot like overdriven pop battering rams.
For The Scene Between, their first album in four years, Parton found himself writing and recording the music entirely alone, a process not too different from what went into Thunder, Lightning, Strike. Yet while The Scene Between lacks some of the retro kitsch charm that defined their best work, Parton returning to his previous modus operandi has resulted in an album that features his most diverse and effective songwriting to date.
Parton approached The Scene Between with several rules in mind: the songs would be written with a melody-first principle; samples would not be used as musical building blocks akin to material found on past Go! Team albums. Opener "What D'You Say" is a sugary head rush of a tune, showing Parton hasn't lost his ability to craft a powerful song out of several unyielding elements. The rest of the album largely eschews the noise collage/hip-hop work of his past in favour of emphasizing the band's power pop leanings, and songs like "Reason to Destroy," "Blowtorch" and "Waking the Jetstream" nail the band's objectives perfectly without seeming out of place in the band's discography. The result: a Go! Team album that works by evoking their past yet looking optimistic towards the future.
(Memphis Industries)For The Scene Between, their first album in four years, Parton found himself writing and recording the music entirely alone, a process not too different from what went into Thunder, Lightning, Strike. Yet while The Scene Between lacks some of the retro kitsch charm that defined their best work, Parton returning to his previous modus operandi has resulted in an album that features his most diverse and effective songwriting to date.
Parton approached The Scene Between with several rules in mind: the songs would be written with a melody-first principle; samples would not be used as musical building blocks akin to material found on past Go! Team albums. Opener "What D'You Say" is a sugary head rush of a tune, showing Parton hasn't lost his ability to craft a powerful song out of several unyielding elements. The rest of the album largely eschews the noise collage/hip-hop work of his past in favour of emphasizing the band's power pop leanings, and songs like "Reason to Destroy," "Blowtorch" and "Waking the Jetstream" nail the band's objectives perfectly without seeming out of place in the band's discography. The result: a Go! Team album that works by evoking their past yet looking optimistic towards the future.