The Go! Team - Apollo Throwdown

Reminiscent of early 90s cut-and-paste dance anthems; collating together a million obscure samples into their vast collage of sonic brilliance, The Go! Team's latest single Apollo Throwdown is a trippy dream-like construction. Dropping us for three minutes into a whirlwind of eclectic sounds and influences, it drips in the inventiveness the group have always been defined by. Timeless and exuberant to the extreme, it's a party song to cheer the soul.

Don't search for lyrics, meaning, or a chorus too deeply here. That's not what Apollo Throwdown is about. Previous single Buy Nothing Day was the 'chorus' song of the album; the traditional burst of all-out pop - but here the emphasis is placed solely on the beats. And what wonderful beats they are. The song seems to blossom and multiply out of that percussive element, fashioning a barrage of sound that batters into you like a truck. And you're picked up and swept along by it into everything else the song has to offer.

What The Go! Team have always done so well is conjuring up that 'feeling' of happiness and the perfect bliss of when you know, deep down in yourself, that you're having a good time. And once again, they're right on the money with Apollo Throwdown.

Apollo Throwdown is available to download from iTunes now.

The Go! Team - Buy Nothing Day

Some songs fill you with such a sense of unadultered joy and good feeling you can scarcely believe they truly exist. They don’t quite seem real, more like something conjured out of dreams and fantasy, a blurry memory of happiness that flashes only for an instant through the humdrum grey of ordinary life. The Go! Team’s Buy Nothing Day is one such song, and as a first single from their new album Rolling Blackouts, it really is perfect. The ideal lead single from a record is one that hits the listener with a bang, that cry of ‘We’re back!’, the call of an old friend from across the road.

And Buy Nothing Day is all this and more. With lovely 60s harmonies and twangly guitar reminiscent of the Mama’s and Papa’s this is a song of sunshine, smiles and pure radiance. The verses are almost childlike in their punky outlook on the world. And then comes the chorus, which is quite simply one of the best I’ve heard this year so far. They really don’t come like this anymore. Think back to the likes of the Manic Street Preachers, big sing-along choruses that fill you up with sheer emotion.

In a perfect world, a song like Buy Nothing Day would be Number 1 for a month at the very least, and you’d hear it playing from every car radio across town. But for the time being at least, when this song comes up on your iPod shuffle, you can guarantee you’ll be feeling better than before. Pure happiness in sonic form.