The Go! Team

Thunder, Lightning, Strike

Columbia Records

Four out of five stars

If the Go! Team’s Thunder, Lightning, Strike album could somehow constantly play as the soundtrack to your life, you’d always be happy.

You’d skip everywhere you went, wearing a ridiculous smile and waving at everybody.

You’d go around helping old women cross busy streets and rescuing kittens from trees.

While listening to The Go! Team’s spontaneous and gleeful montage of schoolyard chants, ’70s TV show themes, wholesome old-school hip-hop and a unique brand of indie rock, nothing could bring you down. The British sextet has managed to pack more sunshine into this album than its dreary side of the Atlantic sees all year.

Thunder, Lightning, Strike reminds listeners of the good old days-even if they never had any.

While each track is a rambunctious pep-rally-meets-house-party, the song “Huddle Formation” contains all the qualities that make the entire album great-adorable schoolyard cheers, breakbeats that are harder than playground blacktop and melodies more infectious than jump rope jingles.

Overall, Thunder, Lightning, Strike is an energetic burst of originality illustrative of all that is missing from music today.

Marshal Hogan