GoGoGo Airheart

Rats! Sing! Sing!

(Gold Standard Laboratories)

Record Review by Michael Byrne

Record labels and the press, not bands, turned “post-punk” into a slur.  For every one Rapture or Hives the mainstream decides is God’s afterbirth, there are three bands doing innovative and important music that’s building upon what the movement started twenty odd years ago; Kaiser Chiefs, The Fever, and (yes) Bloc Party are among a field genuinely transfusing art and rhythm into the still foul pop-punk runoff.  GoGoGo Airheart have a lot on these revivalists because they’ve been at it since before it became a revival, playing in and among Rocket From the Crypt and Tristeza and perhaps paving the way for the revival’s first major wave.

This disc is built upon a core sound that, yes, echoes 1982 and 2002, but doesn’t altogether adopt its primer, nor does it self-consciously break from it, vis-à-vis the Liars’ breathtaking ear-fuck They Were Wrong, So We Drowned.  Those postpunk forward-forward-trip rhythms are there, so yes, Hipsterbot, you can load up your dance software (and even set the irony controls pretty low.)  There’s so much happening around that sound though, it’s a shame to focus on it.  Be careful with “Taxi Up” whose sprinting drum lines, chanted vocals (again, see also: Liars), and garage guitars skip the drop-beat entirely.  And the first track is going to confuse someone: basically a busted vocal harmony playing with the disc’s title—“rats! rats! let them sing!”—set on top of an analog synth making, um, rat noises.  Listen to it last and it’s a glorious Mike Vermillion sing-a-long, (or maybe join in with the rats).  Just before the disc’s close, the listener’s been twisted around so much it’s hardy surprising when GoGoGo Airheart fully taps this disc’s half-buried reggae theme and leaves a little dancehall souvenir on “Turn Out the Lights.”

But, nonono (I am sososo sorry), it’s not fusion or eclecticism, which isn’t to say you won’t feel dumb describing it, unless your friends live in Boulder, in which case they’ll absolutely shit.  Unlike certain forebearers, it doesn’t take itself seriously enough to pick a formula and call it theirs, but, even without it, GoGoGo Airheart has their own sound, defined by inclusiveness and fun, which in a musical subgenre that’s often resolved itself with retro ire and a general acceptance of revivalism, is the best we could hope for.