The Go! Team
Thunder, Lightning, Strike

Kids on acid.
Here is the first image that comes to mind.

Northern soul meets hip hop and they go out dressed in an indie blanket.
Here is the second image.

There is a key song, or rather a precise key moment that illustrates all of this: when in the second track "Ladyflash", without even noticing, we transition from carefree sixties soul melodies to a sort of joyful and sunny hip hop. All without a hitch, without backlash, with impeccable naturalness.
The sound of the album is one of the joys of listening: both retro and futuristic, nostalgic and post-modern, it blatantly references the sixties, immerses you in that atmosphere but at the same time envelops it with a modern outlook. Like a beautiful black and white film shot today: both a tribute to the past and a modern outlook.
What a delicate, conscious, and balanced operation has been carried out here!
All the pieces of the puzzle fit perfectly, it is clear that the record is not the result of improvisations but of a meticulous work of recovering past sounds and exploring those of the present. It is a collage of overlapping sounds: a record from the '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s, and 2000s!
Yet all the study behind it, which can indeed be felt, does not at all undermine the immediacy of the work, and this "Thunder, Lightning, Strike" remains, for the avoidance of doubt, a sunny, fun, playful, excessively cheerful, danceable work. In short, an anthem to joy.
And it is not even an unsettling and boring anthem to joy like a Polyphonic Spree album. Not at all! It is genuinely an anthem of strength and vitality that can only come from the innocent spontaneity of children.
The compositional skill is evident especially from the fact that, in the end, when you listen closely, it is a work built on instrumental songs. Several tracks are entirely instrumental, while the others, even those with vocals, do not rely on melodies for their construction but on arrangements and rhythms.
The result is delightfully enjoyable and can be played often and with pleasure. It's something that does well for the heart and spirit, that refreshes and brings light to dark days.

There's no point in analyzing the songs individually, here it's the wall of sound, the Wall of Sound that matters and it has been constructed beautifully.
An original work. They still make them in the new millennium. It's reassuring.