Team Work Somebody’s Gotta Do It LP
Transatlantic collab between Lise Sutter (MARAUDEUR, the STACHES) and Ronni What (SPLLIT, FAKE LAST NAME), with our two intrepid teammates exchanging ideas and inspirations between Leipzig and Louisiana over the course of three years to construct TEAM WORK’s debut, Somebody’s Gotta Do It. For as long as I’ve been aware of each of their respective projects, Lise and Ronni have struck me as kindred spirits cut from the same abstractly patterned cloth, so it’s extremely cool to be given this keyhole glimpse into their long-distance friendship and the richly creative musical partnership that has blossomed from it. The dominant traits of both MARAUDEUR and FAKE LAST NAME’s specific art-punk eccentricities have very much been passed down to TEAM WORK—rubbery bass lines, cut-up lyrical poetry, clattering woodblocks, wonky electronics and tape manipulations, dubbed-out echo and delay. There’s reverberations of LIZZY MERCIER DESCLOUX in the ass-shaking mutant funk groove and playfully taunting doubled vocals of “I Burnt My Tongue With F-icience This Morning,” and without overtly referencing the RAINCOATS, “(Bring More This Time)” still evokes their devotion to rhythm (shaky or not), their ability to conjure a sound that is simultaneously haunting and joyful, and the power of individual voices dissolving into each other to gain even greater strength as collective chants. A record that genuinely creates and inhabits its own world; a desire path splitting off from the established routes of so much point-A-to-point-B modern punk.