LAST TIME out on 2010’s Rolling Blackouts, Brighton collective The Go! Team delivered a set of full on funk, soul, blaxploitation, and samapdelic urban.
This time however the band - or rather founder, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Ian Parton, as he is the only musician featured here, apart from various female vocalists - takes a very different route, plunging headfirst into dream pop and early 1990s shoegaze.
As such genres imply, a dense wall of sound characterises the production, along with synth drones, sustained notes, and layered guitars, but for the shoegaze to work, it has to have melody - and The Scene Between has it in spades, especially on its finest tracks - ‘What D’You Say?’, the title track, the Lush-esque ‘Her Last Wave’, and the glorious closer ‘Reason Left To Destroy’, all of which boast beguiling, clever, vocal melodies, and inspired choruses, as intelligent as they are catchy and anthemic.
Bookended by its best songs means there is a noticeable sag in the middle, and a consequent drop in quality, but even these lesser moments have some merit, for one thing has not changed between Rolling Blackouts and The Scene Between - The Go! Team’s ability to invest everything they do with enthusiasm and high energy.
