Treadmills not required!
OK Go has gained a reputation for being the band that does the cool videos, but in its new album, Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky, it has evolved into the band that has delivered the surprise album of 2010. Sadly it seems to have gone slightly undetected by the music media, but that just makes it all the better. Unique and filled with a great range of tracks, OK Go has put together an intelligent LP that gives the band new credibility.
Starting out with random noises and a dirty bass line, WTF? introduces the funky tones that make up large parts of the record. It also introduces the first of a few moments of madness that nearly ruin the album. Out of nowhere, mid way through, a rubbish tapping riff stands out like a shiv in the neck. Despite this, the song just about stays on the right side of cool, and a complete reprieve is waiting in the Flaming Lips-esque This Too Shall Pass, which is perhaps the best track on the album.
The good times roll on with All Is Not Lost, the thought of which alone is enough to make you want to put the album on one more time. With dreamlike textures and a stand out chorus, it’s a nugget of perfection.
The Lips service continues with the fuzzed up bass on Needing/Getting, which features some supped-up Spanish guitar rhythm and a class flash of feedback.
Skyscrapers is a bluesy, melancholic tune with a funked-up chorus that gets a Howard Moon like head bob every single time, but it’s slightly tainted by the second rusty stab of daftness where Damien Kulash bangs out some stupidly high pitch vocals that don’t really work.
White Knuckles brings the funk and is followed up by I Want You So Bad I Can’t Breath, which is OK, but a diversion from the rest of Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky.
Things get right back on track, though, with the electro-bleep End Love, and then Before The Earth Was Round follows it up with well-placed digital-love computer vocals.
Last Leaf is lo-fi acoustic, adding to the depth of the album, which is bolstered by Back From Kathmandu, a pots and pans stomp that gives a lot of credibility to the back end of the album. The interludes of strings and acoustic wheedling are genius.
While You Were Asleep is a slow, atmospheric dream with more comparisons to The Flaming Lips. The drums are a bit too weak, but that’s not enough to take away from what is a good song.
In The Glass is a dark end note to the album with lyrics including “every day was the same, still praying for rain”. Finishing on a storm of synth noise, it brings together a beast of an album.
Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky will probably continue to go unnoticed by the vast majority of the blinkered masses, but it makes every listen all the better. Slightly flawed, it’s a drop of style in a churning sea.
OK Go, Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky review: 4/5
