Unsealed: A Tribute To The Go Go's

They Say...

Review by Nathan Bush, All Music Guide

Skirting the border between punk and pop that was new wave, the Go-Go's scored their first hit in 1980 with "We Got the Beat." Initially released on England's Stiff Records, the song brought the band out of the underground and into the mainstream. A string of equally infectious '80s bubblegum hits followed, earning the band a degree of cult/kitsch status that lasted after the decade's music fell from fashion. With the Go-Go's themselves only a couple years away from the reunion that would produce 2001's God Bless the Go-Go's, Four Alarm Records returned the band to its late-'70s punk roots with Unsealed: A Tribute to the Go-Go's. All the group's major hits are here, tackled with varying degrees of reverence by the likes of the Pinehurst Kids, Sunset Valley, the Chainsaw Kittens, the Frogs, and others. For the most part, no one seems capable of, or concerned with, diluting the saccharin sound of the music. A lot of the acts are satisfied with driving the hooks home via crushing power chords and spirited vocals, rendering the tunes as indie pop anthems. There are, as always, the exceptions. The Chainsaw Kittens throw a couple of verses from Iggy Pop's "Nightclubbing" into "We Got the Beat," Season to Risk restructures "This Town" with sinister keyboard textures that end in a techno freakout, and the Frogs approach "Vacation" karaoke-style with accompaniment from a lo-fi arcade. The set closes with Allon Beausoleil's recap, reprising a number of the songs in instrumental form with sitars (!). Though Unsealed is hardly essential, it will be a rather amusing nostalgia trip for those who caught the Go-Go's the first time around.