My least favorite question is, "So what does the band sound like?" It seems like nonsense to me because what sounds like an orgy of stray cats to me may sound like the imagined greeting upon entering the pearly gates to you. Music is never objective. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
So, then, what do The Go! Team sound like? Three days after seeing the British six-piece live, I still barely have an answer.
The closest I can get to describing The Go! Team is, as I said to Carlos a day after the show, "like The Avalanches if they started a punk band."
Remember the Avalanches? It was (and, I believe, still is) this DJ crew from Australia (or was it New Zealand? I can't remember and this stupid library computer won't load the webpage) who recorded an album entirely from samples entitled Since I Left You. The album was full of soulful dancefloor dreams and seemed poised to break in the U.S. as it did elsewhere, but then electroclash happened and the Strokes happened and the Avalanches fell off of hipster radar in favor of a bunch of decidedly less creative New Yorkers. (Sorry, dear friends in NYC.)
Imagine that style of cut'n'paste funk performed live by three boys and three girls onstage at the sold-out Troubadour in West Hollywood in the midst of a heatwave so intense that, if we're lucky, the temperature might drop to 80 degrees at night.
It was a night of trying to dance while pushed back against sweat-soaked walls, of moving to excuse passers-by in a rhythm similar to the double drums. Singer Ninja is the energetic force of the band. Dressed in cut-off jeans, an orange tank top and green knee socks, she moved about as if the oppressive weather had not affected her in the least. She looks like she might have been a gymnast as some point, short and very muscular with moves like a snapped rubber band. By the end of the set, she had the entire crowd waving towards the ceiling to expose sweat-stained armpits.
With so many days passing between the show and this update, I honestly cannot remember which songs were played, although I'm inclined to think that most of the album Thunder, Lightning, Strike made it into the performance, including a twee secret track sung by drummer Chi Fukami Taylor.