The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 95

CALENDAR E43 LOSANGELESTIMES POP MUSIC By Steve Hochman Special to The Times HAT, no pompoms? No pyramid stunts? Maybe that would have been a bit much to expect when the English band the Go! Team made its Los Angeles debut at the Troubadour earlier this year. But more to the group than the name evoking a sense of a pop spirit squad. The debut album, Lightning, is a relentlessly upbeat affair that in places features actual cheerleader chants. Live, the chants were pretty much left to female rapper Ninja, but she had no problem capturing the feeling as the five other band members created the musical equivalent of a multicultural pep rally. a bit of a surprise, though, when group mastermind Ian Partonexplains the origin.

reference is a story I read about plane he says. rescue and clean-up crew is called go Make note of that fact. It may well be the only downcast thing you ever hear in connection with this band. The very fact that the Go! Team could sell out two nights at the Troubadour months before the album was released here is typical of the story. got a lot to thank the Internet says Parton, genially soft-spoken and thoughtful over a pre-show dinner.

telling other people. my favorite thing about this. We started on amodest label in the U.K., Memphis Industries. No big advertising campaign. When the album came out in September there was not even much of a a classic word-of-mouth tale, spiked by media notice (influential online music site Pitchfork put the album in its 2004 Top 10) and a buzz-generating appearance at the spring South by Southwest conference in Austin, to a deal with the Sony-BMG conglomerate, whose Columbia Records recently released the album here.

Singular sensibilities HE very existence of the band is a word-of-mouth tale as well. The album itself was anything but a team effort, but rather mostly a one- man show of Working with an sampler, lo-fi tape deck and an engineer (his brother, Gareth), he started piecing together tracks about five years ago at his Brighton home. It was a diversion from his full-time job as a documentary filmmaker traveling the world to do shows for the Discovery and National Geographic channels, among others. Parton brought in a few local musicians here and there to supplement his own playing and sampling, but there was no group. With a 2002 EP released on tiny Pickled Egg Records and then the 2004 album on the only slightly less tiny Memphis Industries, the sound was a hodgepodge reflecting singular sensibilities.

always thought, people mixing things up he says. sound is sort of self-indulgent my favorite things. Car chase music, trumpets mixed with Sonic Youth, breakbeat, double-Dutch, Charlie Brown piano, wind-swept strings. How could I jam it to- gether and make it But it until about a year ago that he needed to figure out how to re-create that all live. The move to the stage came when a booking agent arranged for the Go! Team to open for Franz Ferdinand on a tour through Sweden.

Parton had just three weeks to put a band together. Guitarist Sam Dookcame in via Pickled Egg, having been in a band on that label as well. A third Brighton resident, bassist Jamie Bell, had emailed Parton after buying the first Go! Team release and offered at the time to help if needed. Parton then put out word looking for drummers and was led to two London women, Japanese-born Fukami Taylor and German-born SilkeSteid- inger(who plays just about everything else as well). The final piece came when 22-year-old London rapper Ninja answered an ad Parton had placed.

Her earthy, youthful enthusiasm and poetry orien- tation proved a perfect fit. know I was joining a says Ninja. just called and he said, want to do a And then it was, to do It that much different for the other members. this started, been, go do shows on the weekend, go is and then you go back to work on says bassist Bell, who was working as a draftsman for an engineering firm. next week another show, and then back to In fact, all the band members kept their non- music jobs until just a few months ago, Parton included.

That it has only recently jelled as a full- time entity showed in the cheerful looseness at the Troubadour. But all the live elements seemed well-integrated into the concept, a natural outgrowth of the music Parton put together for the album. Guitarist Dook, wandering the Troubadour be- fore the show, notes that the presentation is still evolving and that sometime the band may have those pom-poms after all. might get this cheerleading group, Rhyme, to re-create those vocals he says, in all seriousness. 16, wear matching outfits.

We want to do the cheers with backing tracks. That would be Sounds like team spirit Annie Wells Los Angeles Times FORGOING THE SPLITS: Members of the Go! Team also held nonmusic jobs until a few months ago, but the band has jelled as a full-time entity. The name evokes a pep squad. Its album features cheerleader chants. Riding a wave of excitement, the Go! Team brings its exuberant, beguiling sonic mix to the stage.

Where: El Rey Theatre, 5515 Wilshire L.A. When: 9 p.m. Thursday Price: $15.50 Contact: (323) 936-6400 The Go! Team By Susan Carpenter Times Staff Writer A NNIE HARDY has a sort of jaded Lolita appeal. The waiflike singer of the L.A. duo Giant Drag is 24 but could easily pass for 13 until she plugs in her guitar and sings jilted-love songs with titles so sen- sationaleven Liz Phair might blush.

what I Bill Hicks-type says Hardy, whose fans adore the band as much for herunpredictable, off-the-cuff personality as for Giant artfully sludgy guitar rock. On and its debut album on Interscope, the group is definitely on to something that smells a lot like the early Many of the tracks seem to subconsciously channel the best elements of the best early alt-rock acts without overtly ripping them off. On various cuts at various times, Giant Drag recalls the smothering guitar fuzz of My Bloody Valentine, the spaced- out vocals of Mazzy Star and the menacing bass of Bring You My PJ Harvey. And they do it as a two-piece, a trick they achieve with a double guitar-amp setupfor Hardy, and Micah ambidextrous playing of the drums and synthesizer. Live, the two are impressive to watch, but for very different reasons.

In the case of Calabrese, his technique: He plays drums with his right hand and synthesizer with his left. For part, not only her singing and guitar also her oddly childlike, anything-goes personality. During a recent in-store performance at Amoeba Music in Hollywood, the first words out of her mouth were, quickly followed by a laissez- faire introduction of her most shockingly titled song, which on the album is printed as an acronym. Later, she launched into an angry diatribe about a former boyfriend named accusing him of stealing the first song she ever wrote and snidely adding that the song could now be found in the used rock section. Then she tore into a hard- driving rendition of Chris that made the original version sound girlish.

Hardy told the story so convincingly that you assumed it was true. But Hardy even know Isaak, and was only 8 years old when Isaak released the song. always liked to joke around and explains Hardy, who talks at length during shows so Calabrese can change his synthesizer settings between songs. lot of times people tell me I should be a stand-up comedian, but I think be as funny if there a song to kick in right adds Calabrese, whose shy demeanor perfectly complements brashness. Off on the wrong foot I 2001, when Hardy and Calabrese first met, it was hardly instant chemistry.

The exchange went something like this: I know your Calabrese said. Hardy responded. Then she kept dancing. of us wanted to meet each other at says Hardy. because mom worked at the same Internet company as Calabrese and had been trying unsuccessfully to play musical matchmaker.

The future members of Giant Drag resisted because L.A. stereotypes fueled their imaginations. Hardy envisioned Calabrese as a Creed wannabe, and Calabrese imagined Hardy as aprima-donna Jewel. They only met because their respective best friends started dating. The stereotypes were quickly dispelled asthey got to know each other and learned they liked a lot of the same music Neil Young, the Beatles, Nirvana.

It was dumbed-down versions of Beatles songs that helped Hardy learn to play guitar when she was a teenager in Orange County, and the Misfits who taught her how and easy and music could be. While the rest of the kids her age were out surfing getting stoned, she was writing songs on an acoustic guitar in her bedroom. The process is pretty much the same today, Hardy says. She writes the music, brings it to Calabrese and they jam for 20 minutes until it jells. In the beginning, their jams were for fun on the They recorded a couple of songs but they consider themselves aband until Hardy without asking Calabrese booked a gig.

that, the shows just kept Hardy says. never had to book ourselves. People always invited The third live show, in August 2003, was at the Silverlake Lounge. The performance led to a monthlong residency there and a cut on the compilation CD, followed by the coveted Monday night residency at Spaceland. Just when record labels began circling, Calabrese quit the band, but he returned about a year later to record and Giant Drag is currently on tour supporting up-and-coming British act Nine Black Alps in the U.K.

Later this fall support the Cribs. happened for us so quickly and so says Hardy. almost seems unfair when I look at some of our bands that have been doing the same thing for seven years and are in the same From the odd couple, music to break up by Anne Cusack Los Angeles Times OPPOSITES ATTRACT: The shy demeanor of drummer and synthesizer player Calabrese is just the complement to singer-guitarist raucous, unpredictable behavior during the shows. It was dislike at first sight for musicians Micah Calabrese and Annie Hardy, but that stop them from turning shared artistic passions into the duo Giant Drag..