The Go! Team serve a “global fruit salad” with ‘Get Up Sequences Part Two’
Musicians of a political bent walk a narrow tightrope. “Protest songs have always been a balancing act,” says The Go! Team’s Ian Parton. “If you’re too sledgehammer, it’s cringey-like the Scorpions’ ‘Winds of Change’ or something.” Swing too far the other way, and you wind up saying nothing at all or depressing the hell out of everybody. With Get Up Sequences Part Two, The Go! Team have struck a fine balance between weighty subject matter and jubilant songcraft, weaving their political leanings into the very fabric of this cosmopolitan, kaleidoscopic and genuinely euphoric record.
Parton regards this second Get Up Sequences LP as a sort of “global fruit salad”, a “united nations of sound” blending sonic influences from all over the world. The Brighton group’s first record, 2004’s Thunder, Lightning, Strike, was perhaps the most outward-looking release of the early 2000s, arriving at a time when groups like The Libertines were still obsessing over Albion. With six albums to their name, The Go! Team are still hungrily devouring cross-cultural influences, and this album sees them at their most ravenous.
From ‘Look Away, Look Away’ to ‘The Me Frequency’ and ‘Baby’, Get Up Sequences Part Two never once ceases its globe-trotting. The Go! Team’s collaborators this time round, include the West African girl group Star Feminine Band, Indian Bollywood playback singer Neha Hatwar, Kokubo Chisato from J-Pop indie band LucieToo, 19-year-old Detroit rapper IndigoYaj, Hilarie Bratset (formerly of Apples in Stereo), Brooklyn rapper Nitty Scott, and countless others.
Occasionally, the sheer quantity of sonic information encased in tracks like ‘Gemini’ and ‘But We Keep On Trying’ is a touch overwhelming, but according to Parton, that’s sort of the point. “Maybe it’s an anti-Brexit reflex. A rejection of flag-waving and inward-facing.” I would argue that Get Up Sequences Two is less anti-patriotic and more anti-stasis. Over the course of their six albums, The Go! Team have transformed channel-hopping into a fine art, one which seeks to oversaturate the listener with unusual musical combinations in the hope that it’ll reset their outlook. “The Go! Team has always been about knowing what’s happening but focusing on the good shit,” Parton says. “It’s about where you let your attention settle”.
Knowing where to let your attention settle is indeed the challenge of this wonderfully peculiar offering, not least because the music is so frequently at odds with what’s happening in the lyrics. While ‘Getting to Know (All The Ways We’re Wrong For Each Other’ sounds like it’s been crafted by a valium-addled K-pop outfit regurgitating the J.B’s, its lyrics focus on a girl realising that her country (not, as the title suggests, her lover) isn’t right for her. “Cos I’m just not the kind / You wanted in this nation, the lyrics read,” You liked the ones with things / But honey hey I got none/ I never had enough to get your full attention.”
Other tracks, such as ‘Divebomb’, are more transparent in their support of direct action: “Mr president, senate, madam secretary (shoot !) Introducing myself but you already know me (shoot !) Keeping on, organising, mobilizing (shoot !)” While these calls-to-arms are certainly powerful, they are also highly generalised and sometimes swallowed up by the cosmopolitan swirl in which they’re set. Still, Get Up Sequences Part Two provides a welcome respite from the dour political forecasting favoured by so many UK outfits. One of the most infectious and inventive albums of the year so far, this is one to dance to – not think about.
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