OK Go’s first album in 5 years: Of the Blue Colour of the Sky
The greatest live show I have ever attended was OK Go at the Comet Tavern in Seattle, and I couldn’t be more excited to see these rascals back in the spotlight. The band has been called an Internet sensation, but this label only serves to pigeonhole an interesting and vital band into an easily recognizable nugget for pop consumers who can’t be bothered to keep up with a band that hasn’t put out a record in nearly 5 years. I’ll be the first to admit that even this die-hard fan’s patience was sorely tested, but flash in the pan these guys are not, and Of the Blue Colour of the Sky has arrived to further cement OK Go as a band that belongs in any self-respecting music collection.
Always a savvy and seemingly-shallow-but-secretly-big-hearted group, OK Go has returned this time around with famed Flaming Lips producer Dave Fridmann. While working with Fridmann hasn’t always been pure gold for bands looking to flesh out their songs with the ubiquitous producer’s soaked-in-reverb approach, it’s certainly worked wonders for bands like MGMT, and the choice is an excellent one in this case. Coming from a band that put out two stellar, straight-forward (more or less) pop records, the decision to work with Fridmann on the boards says a lot. Never what you would call an “earthy” band, it’s as if the lads of OG knew they needed to take off and explore a new galaxy of sound, and walk around on an earth less ordinary in order to grow.
The album as a whole is all about space. “White Knuckles” could be confused for Prince at his funkiest, complete with a New Power Generation guitar solo, but that’s about the only song that follows his influence to a T. You may find hints of the former nameless one peppered throughout the rest of the album, but if you’re steeped a little more in modern music trends, you may start to hear more of the “modern natural successor” to Prince’s sound: TV on the Radio. The falsetto used to such great effect by Prince and TV’s Tunde Adebimpe is in full effect on Colour. Singing in the upper registers is far from anything new for OK’s lead man, Damian Kulash, but the big fuzzed-out beats, courtesy of drummer Dan Konopka, and spacey atmospheres provided by Fridmann lean the band decidedly in an experimental-minded direction. More space-rock than power-pop at this point, although the hooks are still in large supply; they just…breathe more. See: the airy bridge of “Needing/Getting”, reminiscent of Red Hot Chili Peppers at their most chill, the one-man-band sound of the eastern-tinged “Back from Kathmandu”, or the Air-like vocoder majesty of “Before the Earth Was Round”.
The album does lag a little towards the end, with a more acoustic approach taking root in songs like “Last Leaf”, but Kulash is, as ever, an imminently interesting lyricist, and his songs have something to offer nearly every music fan, from the sensitive indie heart to the flashiest rock kid. The blow-your-hats-off pop may be a thing of the past (for now), but OK Go have grown in all the right ways, without leaving behind any of the deep grooves that made them one of the funnest bands to dance to. Ever.
Critic’s pick: “Back from Kathmandu”.
