"I'm a suitcase with the hinges bursting free"

I have discovered two new bands (well newly discovered to me anyway) that I am enjoying lately, so I thought I would share.

The Go! Team - Thunder, Lightning, Strike

I really do not know how to describe The Go! Team, so I will quote from Rolling Stone's 4-star review of their album, Thunder, Lightning, Strike:

Jump-ropers of the world, unite and take over. The Go! Team create the long-awaited fusion of Sonic Youth and the Spice Girls, a six-person cartoon-crazy funky bunch from the English town of Brighton. On their debut, Thunder, Lightning, Strike, they blend guitar rock, bubblegum funk, Charlie Brown piano, harmonica, horns, loads of samples and Sugar Hill-style femme rapping from MC Ninja.

This is unlike anything else I own, but all I can say is that the music makes me very happy. It is mostly instrumental, with horns, banjoes, cheering, but some of the songs have some singing, too. I have found that it is excellent music to play while studying -- it is upbeat, fun, peppy, and strange, but not distracting. So I sit in the library and bop my head while reading about Oscar Micheaux, pioneering black film maker.

Highlights of the album include:

• "Ladyflash" - a mixed-up drum & horn number, with an infectious chorus of cheering
• "Get it Together" - another drum-heavy song with a lead flute -- if you don't smile when this plays, you may not have a soul
• "We Just Won't Be Defeated" - with that title, a line of horns, and an opening line that says, "Ready! Ok! Let's rock!" how can you go wrong?
• "Everyone's A VIP to Someone" -- This is the best theme song to a movie that has not yet been made.

Page France - Come, I'm a Lion!

This band is a wonderful new discovery for me. I learned about them in Entertainment Weekly's "Download This" section, and it mentioned their new song "Chariot" from their new album, which I do not have, nor have I downloaded yet. But it did lead me to download their first album, Come, I'm a Lion!, which I have listened to twice a day for the last two weeks.


Anyone who likes both Death Cab and The Decemberists will like Page France, I think, though they don't sound like either band (more like Death Cab though). It is honest, pure, lovely, sublime acoustic pop. Again, this album makes me very happy, and I can't help but smile, but in that almost-want-to-cry way of smiling.

I love it.

I love every song on the album, but here are my favorites:

• "Air Pollution" -- This one starts off as a basic, Nick Drake guitar-type song, and then starts with the lyric, "I once adored a chemical reaction . . ." And it goes from there.
• "Love and Interruption" -- a pure and simple love & breakup song
• "So Sweetly Around Me" -- accordian, banjo, glory
• and my favorite: "Slippery" --because the years are getting slippery