The Go! Team
Thunder, Lightening, Strike
Memphis Industries

How much can music expand without being entirely self-posessed? It's a question that will plague this industry until the history of the 1960s will be undone - either by the apocalypse or someone actually figures out what else can be done with a studio. The answer this brit-pop experiment has decided on is a clash of forces and a giant eclectic step forward in what bubble gum in the twenty first century should sound like. The brass soul of the 1970s is staged behind a rampant and gritty piano/harmonica indie ensemble - issuing warm and earthy production unheard since Jerry Wexler's golden age at Capitol Records (see Aretha Franklin's Lady Soul or The Genius of Ray Charles). The sampling here can rival the magnitude and volume of Paul's Boutique, and in it's own unique mixtures doesn't land far from that target.

It's hard to tell if Thunder, Lightening, Strike is an elaborate pop culture half-joke, or well intended emotional, multi-decade melting pot of healthy instrumentals and urban cheer anthems. Regardless, an incredible journey in either direction, it might be just the recipe to bridge the gaps between a dominating hip hop culture, a catering pop collective, and an invisible fragmented rock nâ?T roll sub-culture. Without being cautiously noisy and weird, Thunder is everything the literate may deem cool and the illiterate may deem listenable.

Hands down the happiest most up beat record in a day in age where the socially conscious are struggling for captivating protest songs and the rest wallow in self-pity. Leave it to trippy brits to see the sun shining in on a troubled industry and troubled world.

Copyright © 2005 Matthew DeMello