Review Summary: Beware of sunburn.
Arriving just a bit too early for those first summer days,
The Scene Between nevertheless sounds like vacation has already begun. A propulsive, thickly mixed stew of raucous power-pop, chunky synths, and sparkling female vocals, the Go! Team’s fourth record shares many characteristics with its brethren – relentless energy, chaotic production, the genius songwriting of Ian Parton – yet at the same time serves as a bridge between the band’s past and their future.
The Scene Between is the first Go! Team record since 2004’s brilliant
Thunder, Lightning, Strike to be composed entirely by founder, composer, and overall mastermind Parton. That latter record was a landmark in its own right, an infectious blend of obscure samples, stomping, hip-hop and punk-influenced chants and an anthemic, reckless sort of intensity that careened from one stylistic point to another, joyous and carefree. Yet where Parton used those tools to make something unique yet resolutely his own, here Parton doubles down on his singular ability to write a hook. Gone are Parton’s counterparts from that record, like nominal figurehead MC Ninja, and gone are the spunky sing-alongs and crates’ worth of disparate sounds.
The Scene Between takes Parton’s considerable gifts and hones them down to the bare essentials: the melodies.
That
The Scene Between is one of the finer power pop records in recent memory peaks to how immense those gifts are. It maintains that distinctive kitchen-sink aesthetic Parton has been known for, but the focus is contained, carefully circumscribed. The aptly titled “Blowtorch” stuffs a cascade of fuzzy drums over a buzzsaw of synths and a twinkling guitar barely making its way over the mix, but the song never overwhelms its firmly pop heart. “Did You Know?” is a gorgeous midtempo ballad, its earworm of a chorus supported by a lush wall of sound. For all Parton’s obfuscations, the songs here are as Brill Building as they come; Parton even enlisted a series of female singers who he insisted on never having heard before. The result is a relic of a past where faceless hired guns created pop jewels while the talents in front of the mic took the credit. “Catch Me On The Rebound” is trifling bubble gum with its winking vocalist, but it’s in the spiraling, schizophrenic production where the song shines. The obvious precursor is a track like “Buy Nothing Day” from the Go! Team’s last record, 2011’s
Rolling Blackouts. That tune had Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino emphasizing the power-pop leanings Parton has turned his focus on here. It was a beautiful, effortlessly catchy song.
The Scene Between constitutes what amounts to an entire album’s worth of “Buy Nothing Days.” The sugar starts to rot your teeth as the sun fades, going slower every day.
The Scene Between may mark a transitional period for the band, going as it is from being an actual band back to a singularly Parton project, but it would be a mistake to draw parallels to the Go! Team’s disruptive debut. This is a record that accomplishes its artist’s stated goal to focus on the melodies, and to turn that electric, fuzz-ridden production style to the service of straightforward, vaguely psychedelic pop – and nothing more. It succeeds in being gorgeous and almost painfully bright, one that draws from indie pop stalwarts like Camera Obscura and the Apples in Stereo to sketch out its own summer soundtrack. Its similarities, however, don’t lend themselves to this kind of single-minded style over the course of an album. The cramped, sun-drenched beauty of “What D’You Say?” dulls with repetition by “Catch Me On The Rebound” and annoys like tenacious sand by “Her Last Wave” (to continue a tortured metaphor, second-to-last tune “The Art of Getting By (Song for Heaven’s Gate)”, with its backbeat spine, more full-throated production, and throwback Go! Team atmosphere, is the record’s Labor Day weekend). By the time “Reason Left To Destroy” fades away, with the unintentionally prophetic line, “there’s no one there,” the beach is closed. You’re ready to go back and sleep off that hangover.
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