GoGo Penguin — GoGo Penguin

InstrumentalJazz
Written By Akhil Srivatsan
 
gpgp
 

I really like GoGo Penguin, both band and latest self-titled album. However, after several years of advocating for their albums soon after they’re released, I must admit this: while I will once again return for the next GoGo Penguin record with a great deal of enthusiasm, I will be disappointed if it doesn’t sound vastly different from this one. For all the praises that follow in the following paragraphs, I must note that a lot of their music is starting to risk falling into the same-y-ness trap of a lot of instrumental bands.

Now, enough naysaying; on to elaborate praising. First off, I think the album cover is among the most perfect I’ve seen for this sort of instrumental album. It matches perfectly the sort of image that forms in my mind when I’m listening to this particular set of instrumental musings by this English piano-and-upright-bass-kind-of-but-not-quite-jazz band. Listening to the album did repeatedly conjure images of a grey-white day in a grey-white room, and the album cover depicted that image perfectly.

I’m reluctant to call the music of GoGo Penguin jazz outright, which is probably stupid because both this album and the two before it were put out by noted jazz label, Blue Note Records. My unscientific reason for classifying it as instrumental-and-not-exactly-jazz is this: I’m very unlikely to play this record, or for that matter many of their previous records, when I’m in the mood for jazz. To me the tag cloud that forms in my mind when I think of this album contains the word jazz, but after many other words: bright piano, technical proficiency, tight yet jammy, instrumental fusion between rock and (then finally) jazz. 

Musically, I find there’s something remarkably comforting about this album. This is particularly interesting because the more technically proficient and progressive acts of today often create opuses that are described as being daunting, or challenging, or prohibitive. This record is nothing like that. I find it to be particularly bright and welcoming, and truth be told, that’s my favourite thing about it.

Check it out on Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube.

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Akhil Srivatsan
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