the Go! Team

July 5, 2021 7:05 AM

If you're looking for bands, you may be looking for UK's the Go! Team. The 'post-genre' band plays feel-good party music; their latest single (slyt).
posted by kfholy (18 comments total)

Particular highlights from previous albums:
Bottle Rocket (just... so much energy)
Junior Kickstart
Everyone's a VIP to someone
Titanic Vandalism
Flashlight Fight (Chuck D is majestic)
Buy Nothing Day
Scene Between
Semicircle Song
posted by humuhumu at 7:43 AM on July 5, 2021 [3 favorites]

This is great! My favorite from — good god, more than a decade ago — is “T.O.R.N.A.D.O.”
posted by ob1quixote at 7:52 AM on July 5, 2021 [3 favorites]

This is certainly a blast from the past, I hadn't thought about the Go! Team in a while.
posted by deadaluspark at 8:18 AM on July 5, 2021 [2 favorites]

I picked up Bottle Rocket from an MP3 blog (ah, memories) back then and it was probably the first time in since my teenage years I loved a new song so much I got to the end and immediately replayed it three times.
posted by YoungStencil at 8:24 AM on July 5, 2021 [2 favorites]

yes, there is a guilty rush of pleasure when you get that "oh, I've been digging GO! Team for years now" and that's how you know you have a tiny bit of hipster in your DNA

obligatory "how did the hipster burn the roof of their mouth" they took a bite of their pizza before it was cool
posted by elkevelvet at 8:24 AM on July 5, 2021 [7 favorites]

I first heard of this band from playing Little Big Planet. Get it Together was one of the first songs you hear in the game and it really set the tone.
posted by mach at 9:27 AM on July 5, 2021 [1 favorite]

Yay Go! Team!

The best feelgood music of all time!
posted by lumpenprole at 12:16 PM on July 5, 2021 [1 favorite]

2005 (well, originally 2004) was a ridiculously strong year for music releases, but I ... don't think there's anything cool about the Go! Team -- in the technical sense that the joyous energy is not dimmed by any pretense you're chill. I'm glad there's more to come from them.
posted by k3ninho at 12:20 PM on July 5, 2021

(Around 2006) A friend had what they claimed was the music catalog of "X" (insert person of unimpeachable cool and both commercial and street cred) that they got from someone who worked as X's personal assistant. We got a copy of the playlist, it was probably a gigabyte of music - much of it really great and that we'd never heard of. Among the crazy windfall was "The Go! Team." and yeah, we absolutely played it a bunch of times in a row.

Also, 2005 was not long ago - it's like what six years ago or something. The music totally holds up. It's great to hear them put out a new album.
posted by From Bklyn at 3:19 PM on July 5, 2021 [6 favorites]

When I first heard them like fifteen years ago, I described "Huddle Formation" as "the soundtrack in your head for the moment when you're on the last day of middle school and you just found out that your crush likes you too and you've got the whole summer stretching out in front of you." Then five and a half years ago I finally saw them live the day after I met my wife, so that felt pretty prophetic.
posted by Navelgazer at 6:53 PM on July 5, 2021 [3 favorites]

On days when everything is feeling OK I put Ladyflash on the radio and just cruise. It's kind of the perfect song.
posted by 1adam12 at 8:59 PM on July 5, 2021 [1 favorite]

I love the Go! team! The new one is great and their music has an energy that just can’t be beat!
posted by sleeping bear at 9:20 PM on July 5, 2021 [1 favorite]

Glad the Team is back on the Blue and it's not me posting them again haha because I honestly would
posted by Panthalassa at 12:14 AM on July 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

I also stumbled across them via Little Big Planet way back when. Good to know they still are doing their thing. Now off to listen to their new single twenty times!
posted by Harald74 at 5:18 AM on July 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

The Junior Kickstart video is the wrong link. It HAS to be this one.
posted by Phreesh at 11:54 AM on July 6, 2021

Not to be confused with The Go Team.
posted by 3.2.3 at 5:21 PM on July 6, 2021

One of the wildest Go! Team songs isn't actually a Go! Team song. At some point, Ian Parton started writing and composing songs outside of The Go! Team, as principal songwriters often do. This eventually leads to an oddly familiar single for the then-popular Japanese idol group Momoiro Clover Z.
posted by chrominance at 11:20 PM on July 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

After listening to that Momoiro Clover Z song I was going to say that whatever patch Parton uses for horns is so good, but reading this 2005 Sound on Sound interview, maybe they're real and that's why they sound so good? Either way, he sure does know how to write a horn part. I covet that ability greatly.
posted by ob1quixote at 10:55 AM on July 7, 2021