171. The Go! Team - Thunder, Lightning, Strike (2004)

At its best, this sounds like the music that would play when you and your motley crew of well-trained misfits jump in your specially outfitted van and drive around the city solving crime and other related mysteries. At its worst it sounds like a cheap, tinny dance record recorded on some guy's boombox. I found a copy of this at Walmart (!!!) six years ago for five dollars and picked it up and loved it right away, thinking it was one of the best records I've heard in years: it smacks you in the face immediately. It's the opposite of a "grower"; it kicks your ass the first time, and then seems progressively weaker each time you listen to it. It's musical candy, in that a tiny bit of it is great, but after even fifteen minutes it gets tiresome and annoying and you want to throw in something with real substance (It reminds me more than a little of Sleigh Bells' Treats, actually: although this album's much better overall). The followup record has a little bit more of that, but unfortunately not enough, and the songs on that one are weaker overall, so it's a bit of a toss-up as to which one is better. Anyway, the point of this album is EXCITEMENT. There are no moments of quiet or reflection, except for a few interlude-y tracks, which sound like a group of first-graders banging on the school piano when the music teacher is out of the room. Again, is some of it fun? Yes. "Panther Dash" kicks ass, bursting through the gate right away with a gigantic surf guitar riff, as good as anything the Ventures ever put out. The problem with this is that four or five of these songs are just weaker versions of the good stuff, and it just isn't fun to sit through, and the final track is a bizarre, five-minute series of "western" noises (banjos, Ennio Morricone-aping orchestration) that just doesn't work. The best of this is great, but the whole thing is shallow as a puddle of spit on a sand dune and will probably end up like those thousands of "Sounds from Outer-Space!!!" records from the fifties and early sixties you can find in used bins.

MY RATING: 6.9

The Go! Team - "Junior Kickstart"