Thunder, Lightning, Strike | 
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| Artist: The Go! Team
Label: Memphis Industries
Category: Music
List Price: $30.99
Buy New: $4.92
You Save: $26.07 (84%)
New (6) Used (8) from $1.42
Rating:  23 reviews
Sales Rank: 168959
Format: Import
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
EAN: 5024545296426
ASIN: B0002LQ8CQ
Release Date: July 19, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Tracks:
| • | Panther Dash | | • | Ladyflash | | • | Feel Good by Numbers | | • | The Power Is On | | • | Get It Together | | • | Junior Kickstart | | • | Air Raid Gtr | | • | Bottle Rocket | | • | Friendship Update | | • | Huddle Formation | | • | Everyone's a V.I.P. to Someone |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Album Description
Debut album featuring rock hard drum-offs between Silke from Germany & Chi from Japan, distorted campfire harmonica from Ian, car crash electric thrashings from Sam Dook, pumping bass from big, hairy Jamie Bell & joyous MCing from Ninja. Memphis Industries. 2004.
Album Details
A Seamless Debut from a Group that Takes Modern Dance Music and Infuses it with a Lot of Lifeblood and Soul. There Are So Many Influences Here, They Are Too Numerous to Mention all in this Short Space. The Point is that Even with the Kitchen Sink Thrown In, Everything Works! "Thunder Lightning Strike" Has Made it to Many Critics Best Lists of 2004 and with Good Reason.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 18 more reviews...
 Awesome hybrid sound - a mustbuy October 25, 2007
clicclic (Indianapolis, IN Estados Unitos)
This album is great if you're looking for a high-energy fun sound for some party or just for running. Loved this album and am bummed I missed their concert.
The most FUN album of 2005 April 18, 2006
woburnmusicfan (Woburn, MA United States)
It wasn't quite the best album of 2005 (#4 on my list), but it was definitely the most sheer FUN of any album last year. Ian Parton (guitar/harmonica) went the Fat Boy Slim route, mashing together samples and adding live instruments. Parton took brass and string riffs from '60s Fifth Dimension and Supremes albums, documentary sound clips of cheerleaders, etc., and put together an unbelievably happy sounding album. In a time full of gloomy bands that sound upset to be alive, the Go! Team is refreshing and then some. The band pictures show six members, but it's hard to know whether the other five had much part in the album. Frontwoman MC Ninja only appears on two songs. The singles "Ladyflash" and "Bottle Rocket" are the two best tracks, both irresistible. The upbeat instrumentals "Junior Kickstart" and "Friendship Update" aren't far behind. "The Power Is On" and "Huddle Formation" include the cheerleader clips. The biggest problem with the album is that Parton was working with a 4-track recorder in his basement, and purposely using methods to make the sound defiantly lo-fi. As a result, the recording (especially the samples that most songs are based around) sounds tinny. This is a four-and-a-half star album.
(1=poor 2=mediocre 3=pretty good 4=very good 5=phenomenal)
 kick start pop November 29, 2005
almostcool (Lincoln, NE United States)
Although it's only available right now as a slightly overprice import release, you should drop whatever you're doing and hunt down Thunder, Lightning, Strike by The Go! Team just as soon as you can. I'll admit that I'm one to be as cynical as anyone (especially these days) and that I tend to like my music more on the melancholy side of things for the most part, but this debut release from the UK boys and girls sextet has got hooting and hollering along with it. Part cheerleading routine, part Jackson Five, part guitar-fuzz, and part hip-hop mashup, it's comes at you fast and furious and blows out your ears in 10 tracks and just over a half-hour running length.
One of the best things about the group is that they for the most part play all their instrumentation rather than sample it. Upon first hearing this release, I thought the release was a crossfader smashing excursion into ripped samples and overdubs, but after seeing short clips of the group rip it up live with instrumentation (and a bit of sampling), I'm fully convinced (not that I would have been any less impressed had they done it the other way around). The album wastes no time getting rolling, as the opener of "Panther Dash" busts out of the gate with a 70s TV theme-show drum rumpus as a harmonica and guitar team up for a good natured showdown.
From there, the listener is hardly able to catch a breath as "Ladyflash" again busts loose with weird vocals and flutes that almost sound like Bollywood (chants of "We're here to rock the microphone" included) while "Junior Kickstart" sounds like a hyper-saturated theme containing bits from every cool car-chase sequence or Warriors-style throwdown lead-in done in the past 20 years. It doesn't really matter that half the time you can't make out the lyrics and the other half they're simply chants to "rock" or countdowns to bring that beat back because the group flys by the seats of their pants with such reckless abandon that it's hard not to get caught up by it all.
So yes, the group might be fluffy, and while they call to mind all the references mentioned above and then some, they do it in a way that makes it all sound fresh and fun again. Hearing Thunder, Lightning, Strike for the first time will probably give you sorta the same feeling you had when you first heard When I Left You by The Avalanches. You know you've heard the parts before, but you've never quite heard them put together in a way that the group has done it, and for that they put a grin on your face and a little bit of shuffle in your step. Easily one of the most fun releases of the year. If this thing ever gets better distribution, all Top 40 pop tartlets best watch their backs, because I have a feeling The Go! Team knows ninja moves.
(from almost cool music reviews)
An overlooked unique sound - Another great one! September 19, 2005
Bill Stella (Somerville, NJ USA)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Track 5 on "Thunder, Lightning, Strike", "Get It Together" is the hit theme song to a hit TV show that hasn't been made yet and doesn't yet realize it's the perfect song for them. Until then, it's a perfectly bright, mood-enhancing, some might say Power Song, inevitably annoying when you just want to be left alone to stew in one's own crap, but you just can't stop hearing it everywhere.
But it isn't everywhere -- yet.
Get into it before someone you hate buys the rights to associate it with their product and ruins it for you.
And the entire album extends that good feeling. I imagine myself running around the yard with kids to this album. I imagine myself joining the coolest cheerleading team ever to dance to this album -- and I usually hate the idea of myself cheerleading. I imagine every minute I listen to this album is another minute banishing gloom from my life.
Where the heck's the buzz for a work as positive and genuine and accessible as this???
People I talk to keep complaining about how everything they hear sounds the same, but almost no one goes out of their way EVEN JUST A LITTLE to find great stuff by folks making new, exciting POP MUSIC like the Go! Team. This album still has time to prove itself in the marketplace in the US, although it has been around a long while in the UK, but The Go! Team are just one of dozens of artists releasing albums in the last few years that have hit the proverbial wall in terms of the tight control very few channels (distribution, media, labels) have on music. It's not James Joyce, people, but neither is it the bland crap people buy because they only put money down for what they're sold; they only get what they're told to.
Saying that will probably cost me points from people rating this review, but I'm frustrated by the amount of hype it takes to get people to think something is any good. Folks won't change their habits, and put most of their hard earned dollars into the same-stuff-different-day, all the while complaining about the very system they perpetuate.
Meanwhile, most of you are missing great fun stuff like Go! Team, and Michael Franti, The Decemberists, Ben Lee, OK Go, Art Brut, Bob Mould, Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings, The Blue Van, The BellRays, Pansy Division, The Raveonettes, Silversun Pickups, Bouncing Souls, Girlyman, Disappear Fear, The Bobbleheads, Willy Mason, Bright Eyes, Coheed & Cambria, Louis XIV (y'all will probably come to know those last three sooner rather than later), Matisyahu, Gogol Bordello, Architecture In Helsinki, and even the latest by Garbage. Among others: I'm just scratching the surface here. (While we're on variety, don't get hung up on the variety of genres represented in that list - it's all -- well, I was gonna say Hits Radio-friendly, but hits radio has been nothing but hostile to anything not already pre-sold and pre-digested, for that matter, for decades.) There's so much great music out there ignored by the powers that be, so you gotta find it yourself.
Don't wait to be sold. The old paradigms are over. You can find out about great music without dealing with media who have lost your trust. Go to bands' websites. (Start with those listed, perhaps.) Listen online to alternative media (I recommend a search on "altrockradio", but there are many others.)
Student's View August 16, 2005
saffron (Edmonton)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I lay this album for 12 hours.. straight.. everytime i have a political science test. Perfection. Sitting in a quiet library sets the perfect ambience for learning. Otherwise it a pretty amazing album. I saw it in GQ which is why i bought it and i havent been disapointed.
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