Thunder, Lightning, Strike

Bombastic, joyful mix of samples and live horns/female vocals. This is an incredibly fun record of sound collages, One of my favorite releases of 04/05. As much as I love this album, the tracks are hard to distinguish from each other, with very similar instrumentation. They fall into one of three categories: songs that sound like Saturday morning cartoon themes, songs that heavily sample 70s/80s vocals, and songs that have lots of spaghetti-western horns. A lot of tracks have countoffs and yea-yea-yeas. See also: The Avalanches.

This is the American re-release of the debut album from last year, with minor changes. It has a tighter sound, and tracks 6 & 11 are newly added from b-sides, though both are pretty weak.

Best instrumental tracks: 1, 10, 12, 13. Best vocal tracks: 2, 4. Singles: 2, 7. FCC Clean.

--David Blackman (Wicked Child)

1. Energetic horns, mostly instrumental, feels like an opening track
***2. More sedate, 70"s disco feel synth beats, lots of "yea yea yea"s. Could be music for a diversity/fun segment on sesame street.
3. Jaunty, jangly, reminiscent of Charlie Brown theme music, whining spaghetti western horn.
***4. Hip-hop/ska female vocals, clapping, darker/more ominous sound
5. Varied track, opens with Stereolab-style 1-2 guitar, moves to flute over hard bass beat reminiscent of Rugrats theme, ends with ~1 minute of scratching
6. Weakest track. Muted, static-y vocal sample of "we just won't be defeated"
7. Guitar build-up intro. Sounds like the background music for a montage in a 70s movie. Somewhat abrupt ending.
8. 40 seconds of a guitar sounding like an air raid siren. That's it.
9. 70's female vocals, fastest vocal delivery. Jackson-5 style "2-4-6-8-10" countoff.
10. Symphonic, hopeful sound, slower, catchy repeated piano riff, western-style horns.
11. Hushed female lo-fi vocal over a lone piano, 60s psych-folk feel
***12. "5, 6, 5, 6, 7, 8" intro. Hardest, best guitars on the album.
***13. Banjo intro, rolling feel. Very wistful western feel, very much a closing song, "goodbye & happy trails" sentiment.