Jon Bauckham meets The Go! Team’s Ian Parton to discuss the band’s adventurous third album, Rolling Blackouts


It is six years since The Go! Team earned themselves a Mercury Prize nomination for their debut album, Thunder, Lightning, Strike. In a shortlist that included Hard-Fi and the Kaiser Chiefs, it was not particularly challenging to stand out as something ultimately refreshing from their contemporaries. Starting life as a solo project for Brighton resident Ian Parton, their debut embraced a cut-and-paste aesthetic, plundering samples from a variety of different sources and combining them to create something new altogether. “I’m a bit of a hoarder!” laughs Ian, when recalling the initial stages of the songwriting process. “I gather loads of ideas and listen back before whittling it down to my favourite bits. By then, even to your own ears, it can feel almost like someone else has done it.” New album Rolling Blackouts  continues this trend by taking conventional song structures and melding them with a mishmash of different influences, incorporating soundbites as diverse as old school hip-hop and Bollywood soundtracks.

But with a stronger emphasis on live instrumentation rather than sampling, it also stands as perhaps their most accessible record. “I think the main thing with this album was that I really wanted to make it more ‘sing-y’. I think that The Go! Team had become synonymous with just having a girl shouting over the music,” explains Ian. “I definitely wanted a bit more light and shade, a bit more variety and some space to breathe in between the songs. The last album was a bit fucking relentless. It was like someone poking you for half an hour!” That album was 2007’s Proof of Youth, notable for its guest  appearances from Public Enemy’s Chuck D and electro diva, Solex. Four years down the line, however, Rolling Blackouts picks up from where its predecessor may have faltered – and it hardly begins with a whimper. On ‘T.O.R.N.A.D.O.’, frontwoman Ninja spits tough-tongued cheerleading chants, layered over knockout brass arrangements. Such an opener reassures us that the band have not lost their swagger, drawing the listener into a globetrotting collection of songs, taking ideas from around the world and experimenting with unusual new instruments such as kalimbas and Omnichords. “I hate the word ‘journey’, but the album puts you in different places,” says Ian. “One minute you find yourself in a ticker tape parade with a marching band, and the next minute you’re in an office in Tokyo.”

The latter scenario refers to ‘Secretary Song’, featuring lead vocals from Deerhoof frontwoman Satomi Matsuzaki. “The idea for that really just came from the song backwards. You think about what kind of voice you would need to bring it to life and who you would imagine singing it, so you pull out all the stops to make it happen.” With the addition of typewriters, the track captures the buzz of Tokyo as a city at work, present also in the internal dialogue of Matsuzaki’s frustrated office assistant, counting down the hours until the end of her shift. In contrast, lead single ‘Buy Nothing Day’ shifts continent and drives the listener “straight down the Pacific Coast Highway”, with Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino at the wheel, adding the same sun-kissed Californian splendour that characterises her own output. ‘Ready To Go Steady’ is of a similar vein, the chorus of which could easily have been retrieved from a time capsule buried by Phil Spector, with its coy ‘60s girl group leanings and Wall of Sound drum fills. “When I hear tracks like that, I think of high school proms, with the Prom Kings and Queens dancing like they’re in Carrie or something like that.”

Though perhaps without the blood and electrocution, there is definitely a romanticised, inherently stateside feel to fragments of the album. But Ian is keen to point out that there was no geographical agenda when he first began writing. “I wasn’t particularly fussed about making the record sound British,” he explains. “I liked the idea of it sounding global and international, but at the same time, I don’t kiss Yankee ass! I don’t think everything’s better in America.” But if there is one thing that can be agreed about the direction taken on Rolling Blackouts, it is that it offers a darker dimension than previous outings. With the title track’s minor inflections, it shows there are more to The Go! Team than first meets the ear. “Everyone says that ‘Rolling Blackouts’ sounds like My Bloody Valentine, but it actually started life sounding really Ennio Morricone. I think I like the fact that you’re able to confuse people by putting such wildly different things next to each other.”

Soon, Rolling Blackouts will take to the road. However, the prospect of an intensive touring schedule does not threaten to rid all six members of The Go! Team of their on-stage energy; swapping instruments and generally making a lot of noise. “It’s the highlight of the day, so everything is building up to that moment,” explains Ian. “We still have as much energy now as we did on the first album - more energy possibly. Ninja treats it like a marathon. Her commitment is just ridiculous.” Despite ready to unveil a collection of brand new songs to the world, Ian is merely of proud the band’s greatest existing achievement - to have forged a unique and instantly recognisable sound. “I think it’s just about putting a stamp on your music,” he concludes. “I’m not massively fussed to be honest about getting really big now. But I definitely think we have created a sound which is distinctively ‘Go! Team’ – whether you like it or not.”