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Go Sailor - Go Sailor (1996)

Artist: Go Sailor

Author: Sarah

Date: 09/07/2025

Listen: Bandcamp (slightly different tracklisting)

When I first heard Go Sailor back around the time I was first getting into indiepop, I kinda ignored it for being "too twee". Now, several years later, it's become probably my favorite of Rose Melberg's bands! Maybe all this twee has finally rotted my brain, maybe I've just seen But I'm a Cheerleader too many times, or maybe something else?

Ironically, I've now come to think Go Sailor is probably the least twee of Rose's bands. Like, it's basically just pop punk, right? You've got Rose and Linton from Henry's Dress, but then you've also got Paul Curran from Crimpshine, a band who I didn't (and still don't, really) have any familiarity with but is apparently pretty important to East Bay punk.

From that lineup, it would be reasonable to expect something noisy, but actually everything here is pretty sedate as far as those things go. The guitar's got a kind of rubber band sound to it, like a slightly more polished Bratmobile, or maybe something off cub's Betti-Cola, and that effect is only heightened by the bass, which usually feels a bit like it's doubling that up.

So the songs are all bouncy and cheerful, but like half the album is about breaking up, and in pretty acrimonious fashion! On "Fine Day for Sailing", she sings about how she doesn't "think about hurting you much anymore", or on "Long Distance", about how she "won't wish your plane down just this time". There's the requisite love songs too, of course, such as "Together Forever in Love" or the unrequited "I Just Do", but overall this album's got a bit more menace to it than it initially appears, and that's what I like best about it these days.