The Go! Team Proof Of Youth

With Proof Of Youth, The Go! Team are looking to establish themselves as a Ronseal kind of band: you know exactly what to expect, you get that, and you're happy with the results. When The Go! Team emerged on an unsuspecting 2004, they took people completely by surprise and knocked their pasty socks off. I hold fond memories of looking across the (possibly soon to be demolished) Electric Ballroom in Camden and seeing a room fool of pale, skinny individuals in stripy jumpers breaking out their best moves in the vain hope that by doing exactly as charismatic frontlady Ninja said they'd impress the wan, bestriped member of the opposite sex that they'd brought with them. And as the night progressed, you could also see in their eyes how by halfway through they'd given up on their coolest moves and concentrated on having the most fun it was possible to have with their clothes on. The Go! Team pulled off a riotous show that evening - a little diminished the next time I saw them, after the initial Mercury nomination buzz and upped airplay had started to take their inevitable toll.

Things are a little different this time around. For the debut, the singers and dancers were recruited on the back of an already produced record - an almost guerilla album, a maze of untraceable sources that must have given many PRS officials serious headaches. For Proof Of Youth, the inimitable Ninja and her tracksuited colleagues were already in place, and thus songs could be written around them. So this time, there's less of the frantic children's choirs or spontaneous banjo, but the soul-y riffs, trumpet stabs and the sound that makes it feel like you're stereo is a tiny transistor turned up to 11 - these are all retained.

And so it's just as exciting as Thunder, Lightning, Strike! in all the right ways. It's an album that's still going to get an NME club bopping, and it's still the guilty pleasure of myriads of discerning adults who can't get away with enjoying funk amongst their bearded peers.

I've no doubt that if you listen to this album you'll enjoy it, but you probably won't love it like you did its predecessor. You'll dance along but you won't be swept away. You'll maybe listen to it a friend's house, but if you've got the debut, you won't feel any urge to go out and buy your own copy. Maybe with your twenty-first century malaise, you'll download it, thus condemning it with the faint praise that it'll warrant that much effort, but not enough to traipse to HMV on your lunch break. It's that kind of record.