OK GO Of the Blue Colour of the Sky

OK Go have always been known to me to be an energetic band with upbeat tracks so I was a little disappointed with new album ‘Of the Blue Colour of the Sky’ to find it was nothing like what I have come to know of them.

Like most people, I know OK Go for their choreographed treadmill video for ‘Here We Go Again’ and was expecting more of the same when I put this album on. If you have that expectation then you are going to be disappointed as well.

The problem that I am having as I write this though is that I have listened to the whole album through and made some notes (that I would have started the album at the 6th track and the first songs are a waste of space) and now I am sitting at my computer with the album on again and, actually, some of the songs that I disliked, I now like.

That leads me to my problem. This is an album review and looking at the album holistically I don’t like it. I think that it is a rubbish album and if someone put it on in the car on a road trip it would take me until about the third song to open the door and hurl myself out. However, if someone had gone to the trouble to put together a playlist for the roady and included the odd song off this album then I would be well into it. I found myself not liking some songs because of the comparison to the songs preceding it not because of the merits of the song on its own.

Is that quite Gen Y of me? That I only want the bits I want? I don’t think it matters. In this day and age you don’t have to get the whole album. Go to itunes and leave out WTF, End Love, Before the Earth Was Round, Back From Kathmandu and In the Glass (tracks 1, 8, 9, 11 and 13). I would definitely be getting Skyscrapers, because the guitar part makes it great, White Knuckles because it hints at the energy of past albums, and Last Leaf which is done how the track that precedes it (Before the Earth Was Round) should have been done. That leaves about 5 songs that I wouldn’t say are bad, but I don’t know if they are good enough to pay for.

Overall, I think that the lack of dynamics over the length of the whole album makes it hard work to put on and listen to from beginning to end. It really is an album without a place - it is not for driving, it is not a dinner party album; it wouldn’t be a good replacement for Fat Freddies Drop for your summertime BBQ music. Some of the tracks are quite good but unfortunately it is a case of the whole adding up to less than the sum of its parts.

Jeremy White, 18 February 2010