The Go! Team preview

The Go! Team
Double Door, Chicago
Saturday, October 13, 2007

It’s an argument that will never die: Cheerleading – is it really a sport, or just an activity, like, say, jumping rope or solitaire? England’s The Go! Team raise another argument: Cheerleading – is it really music?

Go! Team mastermind Ian Parton would like to think so. Jumping rope and hopscotch? Throw those in as well. In fact, the best way to think of Go! Team’s new full-length, Proof Of Youth (Sub Pop), is a soundtrack for a jump-rope competition performed by a cheer squad fronted by a female rapper named Ninja! The song “Keys To The City” even features The Double Dutch Divas, a group of women in their 40s and 50s who perform double Dutch to songs they’ve written. And that’s not even the oddest cameo on the album. Iconic rapper Chuck D shows up on “Flashlight Fight,” a song that sounds like a Toni Basil/Public Enemy mash-up. Really, the whole record sounds like one big mash-up, though less so than Go! Team’s first full-length effort, Thunder, Lightning, Strike, which was literally Parton sitting in his kitchen stitching together samples. Youth has more of a live feel, thanks in most part to actual group members (Ninja, Chi Fukami Taylor, Sam Dook, Jamie Bell, and Kaori Tsuchida). Still, only one song, “Fake ID,” doesn’t contain a sample of somebody else’s music.

Chicagoans The Cool Kids open.

– Trevor Fisher

Click here for streaming samples of The Go! Team.

Category: Stage Buzz, Weekly