The Getgoes

An animated-film-cum-concept-album for the fictional band The Getgoes. Until now frontmen Jay Peters (Joel Wasson) and Johnny Rhythm’s (John Critchley) contrasting approaches to song writing have benefited the band greatly. Jay grapples with serious social and political issues, and Johnny leans more towards mainstream pop rock. But the introduction of a new manager, Dave Loveya (Joel Wasson) – “love your stuff”, causes a schism in the band luring Johnny away with promises of fame, fortune, and all the perks that go along with it.

The Getgoes is the latest passion project from Joel Wasson, a name that peppers the credits. Along with his two sons, Jared and Caden, the trio make up the real-life band The Discarded, whose songs provide the soundtrack. And it quickly becomes apparent that the film has little ambition for being more than just a vehicle for the band’s songs. The plot is rather thin and loosely hangs together, mostly the film runs from song to song, with occasional exposition heavy interludes to fill in the narrative gaps. Nonetheless it is still a fun conceit for an album.

As an album some songs stand out over others. The low point is an ironically generic song about generic songs, a topic that has been covered at length by musical comedians, see Bo Burnham’s ‘Repeat Stuff’ or The Axis of Awesome’s YouTube sensation ‘Four Chords’. But The Discarded quickly recover as it is followed by the album’s high point, a riotous diss track concerning Johnny’s over inflated ego.

Peter Guindon’s animation has the aesthetics of stop motion, and it is charmingly reminiscent of the joint movement of paper dolls held together with push pins. The film’s groovy pop art design from artists Kristie Ryder, Rachael Muir and Isabella Zeidler is bursting with purples, greens and oranges. These block colours are segmented by clearly defined bold wavy lines, and the look fits somewhere between The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine and The Ricky Gervais Show. As a medium length film, running for approximately 50 minutes, a lot of visual invention is required. Disappointingly The Getgoes falls short in this department with a lot of repetitive animations and clearly reused shots, which it makes little to no attempt to disguise or manipulate.

The Getgoes is more of a concept album than film but for fans it is still a pleasing visual treat to accompany The Discarded’s new music.