Last year, i hailed the Go! Team's new album as one of the best releases in 2004. Thunder, Lightning, Strike was one of those albums that completely went underneath everyone's radar. While everyone was raving about the Arcade Fire or Bright Eyes, the Go! Team went silently along the way. Now, with a lot more press and some exposure at venues in the U.S. like SXSW, the Go! Team is now one of those bands whose hype is following them around - in every venue in their current U.S. tour.
But what made the album so brilliant and fun to listen to went *kaput* in their live performance. See, the reason why I liked the Go! Team's album is because the instruments did the talking while the talking was merely an afterthought. The singing was in the background, rather than in the forefront, and the instruments dominated the songs. Songs like "Panther Dash" were so strong and fun because the vocals were minimal and the guitars were just booming.
At Bimbo's, The Go! Team's focus went from instrumentation to vocals. Ninja is the culprit. God bless her, she's a fun girl to watch. A lot of stage presence. Really made the crowd participate throughout the night with a lot of that side-to-side arm waving reminiscent of that "Hip Hop Hooray!" song by Naughty by Nature back in the 1990's. But fuck girl, must you sing for every single song?
I've got issues with Ninja. She ruined my favourite song off of Thunder, Lightning, Strike. Yes, "Panther Dash", which they opened with, was ruined because her vocals drowned out the sound. Her rapping of incoherent words destroyed the song. I'm listening to "Panther Dash" right now, and the only words that Ninja ever echoes in the song is "1, 2, 3." This can also be said with plenty of the band's other songs, such as "Get It Together" and "The Power is On." If only they sampled her voice instead of doing live. Or maybe even toning down her mic a bit so that she doesn't dominate but instead co-exists with it.
She wasn't all that bad though. Songs where her vocals were appropriate lived up to my expectations. In "Huddle Formation," she sang it well but only because the sound drowned her out a bit.
The songs that were the best were, ironically, the ones where Ninja didn't sing. "Junior Kickstart" absolutely kicked ass live. This is because the band just went and rocked out rather than having Ninja sing. Also, their song "The Ice Storm" was also really good. In this song, Ninja merely pressed a bell rather than sing. So, she is good for something.
All my friends agreed that this was the case. We even dubbed the band "Spice Team" because of Ninja's antics. Or, as I repeatedly said last night, it's like you're expecting to drink Coca-Cola but yet when you sip your drink, it was actually Sprite. Yeah, you are shocked and appalled because you have trained your taste buds to taste Coca-Cola. Well, in this case, my ears were not trained to hear Ninja. Thus, when I heard Ninja, I was dumbfounded.
Overall, a good show. Despite the surprises.
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