Oh No, OK Go, 2005
Oh No
OK Go, 2005
1) Invincible
2) Do What You Want
3) Here It Goes Again
4) A Good Idea at the Time
5) Oh Lately It's So Quiet
6) It's a Disaster
7) A Million Ways
8) No Sign of Life
9) Let It Rain
10) Crash the Party
11) Television, Television
12) Maybe, This Time
13) The House Wins
The sophomore release from hidden, just-off-pop group OK Go plays well to a broad audience, old and young, literary and pop-oriented, alike. The music covers a range of styles--straight-ahead rock, alternative rock, Latin-feel, off-waltz--and the lyrics oscillate between those fitting a college-student house party to those fitting a contemplative drive in the mountains (or the country, or wherever you drive if you don't have mountains, you poor bastards). So, while OK Go seems to fit right into what you'd expect--the commercial cookie cut-outs--they also go beyond mainstream sounds into really decent and appealing writing and musicmaking.
I like this album in part because I can listen to it on random, which makes the listening experience fresher and longer-lasting than the same order over and over (I live in the dark ages of CD players in my car--I am also a poor bastard). However, the order of the tracks as they have it seems to work: the first track is "Invincible," a charging rock tune about the fiery, devastating, universe-eating ex-lover. From there, the first three or four tracks fall under "poppy": basic 4/4 rhythms, vague, almost cliche lyrics, and radio lengths. The fifth track, "Oh Lately It's So Quiet," takes a bit of a light Latin feel to contemplate where an ex-lover is now, "whose sheets you twist," "whose name you hiss." After that change in feel, it seems as if the rest of the album takes a turn for the tad-more-philosophical and the tad-more-personal. The remaining tracks are more laidback and reserved, with the exception of "Crash the Party," a true college cavalier poem set to music. The energy, however, from the first four tracks still grooves beneath these later tunes.
My personal favorites are "Let It Rain" and "The House Wins." The former is a semi-waltz with 13 beats to a phrase rather than 12, and the lyrics beautifully collapse in on themselves while the poetry stands out among the glittering rubble. And "The House Wins" is a great piece to end this surprising, grooving, diverse album with: it's a somber contrast to the poppy, mainstream feel of the beginning of the album, and its happy chords belie the "just give in" message of the lyrics. It leaves the listeners with the sense that this group is more complex and thoughtful than "Crash the Party" would have them believe.
I recommend this album to anyone who's interested in something they can listen closely to or ignore as circumstances demand--it's a diverse selection from a group capable of a diverse sound. Overall, B+.