The Beat Surrender

I caught OK Go live a few years back in Leeds when they supporting someone (sorry can’t remember who) at Leeds Met, a group who at the time didn’t stand out in anyway, but did have some half decent indie-pop tunes that were instantly hummable even if they were just as easily forgotten ten minutes later.

Then they did the dance.

It was a choreographed four minute effort the likes of which i’ve never seen a proper band produce before. The crowd were a mixture of awe struck, horrified and ecstatic and they etched theirselves into the memory of everybody that caught them live on that tour. The dance went on to be a massive youtube hit and a cult was born.

After that they produced the Oh No album which was well received and things seemed to be going swimmingly for them, the problem with having a novelty dance and instant cult status is that it suggests that if you scratch below that gimmicky surface there isn’t too much depth to the groups musical talent.

This was hinted at as i’ve said with the first wave of material, but new album Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky hammers home that point even more. They’ve discovered efffects and distortion and have tried to use them to transform themselves into some kind of psychedelic pop outfit and it hasn’t worked.

It’s a mess of an album that bores more than it interests andwhile this might have been the album that they wanted to make, I can’t help but think that a different producer might have brought more out of them.