The last time the Go! Team released an album was in 2018, when they unveiled Semicircle. Last year they popped back up with a song called “Cookie Scene,” and it turns out that was a prelude for a whole new collection. Today the band’s back with official news: Their sixth album is called Get Up Sequences Part One, and it’s out in the very beginning of July. That’s a perfect time of year for the ebullient, colorful music we long ago learned to expect from this band.

While the new Go! Team music is presumably as bright and positive as ever, part of the album’s genesis was a bit more unnerving. Go! Team songwriter Ian Parton started losing his hearing at one point during recording, and the experience was wrapped up in the completion of Get Up Sequences. Here’s what he said about it in a press release:

I lost hearing in my right ear halfway during the making of this record. I woke up one Thursday in October 2019 and my hearing was different in some way — it fluctuated over a few weeks and at one point everything sounded like a Dalek. I seem to remember listening to music was bordering on unbearable. Over time it settled into just a tiny bit of high end being audible on my right side. I thought the hearing loss was from playing music too loud over the years but it turns out I was just unlucky and it was a rare condition called Menieres. It was traumatic to keep listening to songs I knew well but which suddenly sounded different and it was an odd juxtaposition to listen to upbeat music when I was on such a downer. The trauma of losing my hearing gave the music a different dimension for me and it transformed the album into more of a life raft.

Along with the announcement, the band have shared a lead single called “World Remember Me Now.” “I’ve always been interested in people’s daily routines — what people do all day,” Parton says of the track. “It was written ages ago but has become strangely relevant to the world now. It’s easy to feel forgotten at the moment.” Check it out below.

TRACKLIST:

01 “Let The Seasons Work”
02 “Cookie Scene”
03 “A Memo For Maceo”
04 “We Do It But Never Know Why”
05 “Freedom Now”
06 “Pow”
07 “I Loved You Better”
08 “A Bee Without Its Sting”
09 “Tame The Great Plains”
10 “World Remember Me Now”

Get Up Sequences Part One is out 7/2 via Memphis Industries. Pre-order it here.