By Chris Brook
Listening to the Go! Team’s Thunder Lightning Strike is essentially the aural equivalent of a birthday party. The record is a nonstop whirlwind of flutes, harmonica flourishes, kinetic keyboards, drum smatterings, chants, sing-a-longs, horns and sunshine funk that wouldn’t seem out of place as the soundtrack to a ’70s Sunday morning television show.
The six-piece band, based out of Brighton, England, promises to bring their own brand of over-the-top dance/pop to the Paradise Rock Club Tuesday when their first post-South by Southwest music festival U.S. tour hits Boston.
“The album sounds one way but the shows sound much trashier, much more in your face,” said the lead MC, who calls herself Ninja. “We layer over different samples, there’s so much going . On this tour we’ve got two drum kits, three guitars, a banjo, bass, tambourines … a kitchen sink. There’s so much going on.”
Originally released in the U.K. via Memphis Industries in 2004, several of the record’s tracks had to be reworked in the U.S. in order to bypass copyright problems stemming from their uncleared samples.
Bolstered with two bonus tracks “We Just Won’t Be Defeated” and “Hold Yr Terror Close,” and new vocals on “Bottle Rocket,” Thunder Lightning Strike was finally released domestically Oct. 4 courtesy of Columbia Records. Critics still laud it as one of the year’s quintessential indie rock records.
The band began as the brainchild of Ian Parton, who formed the multicultural troupe nearly five years ago after hunkering down with an ’80s sampler and a four-track tape recorder. In 2004, fellow Brighton cronies Sam Dook and Jamie Bell joined the fold along with Japanese-born Chi Fukami Taylor and German-born drummer Silke Steidinger.
The band’s sassy female rapper, known only by the stage name Ninja, was the last to join, rounding out the sextet.
“I was just surfing the Net looking for auditions. I e-mailed him, he sent me their CD and we met up a little bit later,” said Ninja in a phone interview from the band’s San Diego tour date last week. “I didn’t realize I was in the band until a year down the line; I had never planned to join a band, but there I was.”
The Go! Team’s effervescent glitch-pop has received a warm welcome in America due in part to a glowing review on the indie rock who’s who web magazine Pitchforkmedia.com.
“I think the U.S. crowds are definitely better. Our songs tend to sound like ’70s pop shows and street songs. [Americans] just get it more; they never picked up on it until Pitchfork hyped us up. Now [Americans] pick up on us.”
The collective, who’ve sold out every date of this tour so far, have earned countless comparisons to the fuzzy riffs of Sonic Youth, the cut-and-paste aesthetic of the Avalanches and the sunny psych-pop of the Apples in Stereo, yet Ninja insists some comparisons are better left unsaid.
“I’ve gotten a few comparisons, like one person said I was like Lil’ Kim’s cuter sister,” said Ninja. “That wasn’t much of a compliment … I don’t ever want to be compared to Lil’ Kim, let alone be in the same sentence.”
The Go! Team play the Paradise Rock Club at 967 Commonwealth Avenue Tuesday alongside the Grates and Airborn Audio. Take the Green Line “B” train to the Pleasant Street stop. Tickets for the 18-and-over show are $16.50.
