aaamusic | On 16, Jun 2011

Debut Album ‘This Is Our Way Out’: Monday 11th July

Goodluck Jonathan’s set-up echoes most brilliant bands throughout history. A collective of five very different individuals gelled together by a mutual love and serious appreciation of music and a less serious though equally passionate love of rum, mocking the percussion section, and annoying the Nigerian President by misdirecting his Twitter traffic to their profile (plus other unmentionable exploits expected of a band their age). Their musical influences and loves run the spectrum of genres: from melodic indie to dance to rock, the latter mainly championed by the drum and bass fraternity, “(Goodluck Jonathan) claim that the world “needs a soundtrack…with fucking big drums.” And we couldn’t agree more”. – NME. An eclecticism displayed when the band brought in Breton to remix their track ‘Broken Heart’ mixing Goodluck Jonathan’s dynamic, melodic song with dirty dance beats. For Goodluck Jonathan wholeheartedly believe genres are a chain around a musicians neck and their aim is to “blur the lines between genres until they merge into one barrier between good music and shit music” –Goodluck Jonathan. Amen.

The mish-mash explains the audio rollercoaster ride of most of their songs. A fast, loud, slow, quiet, melodic, raucous, gentle, angry mix all rolled into each track. But while passion brings Goodluck Jonathan together and no doubt makes the music as emotive as it is, it is the individual musicianship of each member that makes the band the strong, prolific beast it is. For what could become an out of control noise explosion is channeled into finely honed, infectious tracks. Like Your Code Name Is: Milo, At The Drive In or And You Will Know Us By Our Trail of Dead, its loud, brilliant, but always organized chaos.

And surprisingly, due to keeping busy with the aforementioned secondary passions befitting of five energetic, social young men, Goodluck Jonathan meet only once a week to throw a few song ideas about in an explosive, creature fusion, before often dispersing and creating parts individually. Reconvening to piece it all together and form the tight knit unit they are with musical parts that seamlessly fit together so perfectly it’s as if they’d rehearsed each twist and turn together in a darkened room day and night for months.

This dedication to creation and difference and progression led the band to release their music as three EPs, the ‘This Is Our Way Out’ trilogy. As a new band, the EPs showcase their early development, the different entities to their sound – from angst post-rock, to the melodic almost Foals and Maccabees-esque intricacies and back again. A brave move to get out such early tracks, that was rewarded by a flurry of critical acclaim from NME making ‘Broken Heart’ on EP1 a ‘Daily Download’ to ‘Mad Licks’ from EP3 getting spins by John Kennedy of XFM.