The Go! Team's mode of operation has been pretty much the same since they began, mashing up funk, bubblegum soul, indie rock, and whatever tickled their fancy into songs so sunny and/or propulsive that listening to their music was like getting a giant shot of B12 and adrenaline simultaneously. Their 2020 album,
Get Up Sequences, Pt. 1, showed that the band hadn't lost any of their charm or fire as it played to their familiar strengths and expanded their pool of collaborators. They further that effort on
Get Up Sequences, Pt. 2 with a vibrant, speaker-rattling set of songs that have all the bounce and soul of their best work, as the group mix and match sounds in their typically head-rush-inducing way. Group leader
Ian Parton and his regulars don't stray far from their established sound, but they hone it to a very fine point on tracks like "But We Keep On Trying," which feels like a
Jackson 5 song played by
Sonic Youth, or "Stay and Ask Me in a Different Way," which sounds like the reverse. This installment of the
Get Up Sequence utilizes some familiar faces from the last album, namely the Detroit contingent of rapper
Indigo Yaj and vocalists
Jessie Miller and
Rian Woods. The former does some impressive rapping on one of the album's toughest songs, "Divebomb," while
Miller and
Woods give the lilting ballad "Getting to Know (All the Ways We're Wrong for Each Other)" some understated soul. It's good to have them back, and their contributions are so good that one almost wishes
Parton would hire them on a permanent basis. That being said, the other vocalists he brings in are top-flight, too. The Beninese group
Star Feminine Band kick off the album with aggressive chants on the careening "Look Away, Look Away," a song destined to give even the most chill listeners the desire to get moving. They also back
Ninja on the gently rollicking "The Me Frequency."
Ninja's other feature, "Gemini," is a highlight of the album, sounding firmly planted in the old school and the future at once. Elsewhere,
Hilary Bratset of
High Water Marks adds some indie pop crooning to the shoegaze-lite "Sock It to Me,"
Lucie, Too's
Kokubo Chisato sings the clanky synth pop throwback "Going Nowhere" with the right blend of innocence and sass, and Indian playback singer
Neha Hatwar slaloms through the shifting waves of sound on "Baby" with consummate skill and harmony. While these tracks show off the group's melodic skill, their track with Brooklyn rapper
Nitty Scott ("Whammy-O") makes a case that they could make some cash moonlighting as hip-hop hitmakers. The first
Get Up Sequence showed that
the Go! Team was firmly back on the course they embarked on with
Thunder, Lightning, Strike; the second might just be its equal. It certainly has the right sound, the right songs, and the same sense of bonkers experimentalism and life-affirming spirit to be at least in the running. ~ Tim Sendra
