{"id":41521,"date":"2009-05-23T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-23T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/oh-no\/"},"modified":"2009-05-23T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-05-23T00:00:00","slug":"oh-no","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/oh-no\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh No"},"content":{"rendered":"

OK Go, the guys from the infamous treadmill video<\/a> (among others), combine the swaggering riffagey thump of Jet with the cheeky ubergeekdom of Fountains of Wayne, with more than a little theatrical\/chameleonic pop savant Queen-ishness thrown in.\u00a0 Either that, or they sound sort of like Weezer and The Cars reimagining the soundtrack to The Rocky Horror Picture Show.<\/i>\u00a0 <\/p>\n

You get the point — there\u2019s something determinedly off-kilter about almost every deliriously catchy power-pop confection on this album.\u00a0 From the opening strains of bombastic opener \u201cInvincible\u201d to the final distortion-drenched fadeout of \u201cThe House Wins,\u201d it\u2019s a truly sparkling combination of oddball humor and rivetingly clever guitar riffage.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Following on the heels of the thundering arched-eyebrow wink that is \u201cInvincible,\u201d \u201cDo What You Want\u201d delivers a dirty-sweet Jet-ish jam with tongue again firmly in cheek, goofy harmonies counterbalancing deliciously catchy guitar lines.\u00a0 The treadmill-erific \u201cHere It Goes Again\u201d completes the opening one-two-three punch, demonstrating that, separate and apart from being associated with one of the coolest music videos ever made, it\u2019s a first-rate guitar-pop tune, a regular \u201cStacy\u2019s Mom\u201d of riffy, witty, burrow-inside-your-brain wonderfulness.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

On \u201cOh Lately It\u2019s So Quiet,\u201d frontman Damian Kulash shows he\u2019s more than just a pretty face with an unusual sense of humor as he delivers a falsetto that\u2019s not just convincing but actually quite good \u2013 not to mention, a major contrast to the screamy growly rock singer parody voice he pulls off on a number of other tracks here.\u00a0 He\u2019s got tremendous range and genuinely inhabits the characters in OK Go\u2019s songs, much like Chris Collingwood of Fountains of Wayne.<\/p>\n

OK Go\u2019s songs don\u2019t feel as meticulously crafted as their New Jersey cousins\u2019 because they\u2019re played with more reckless abandon, looser and harder.\u00a0 Still\u2026 while the quartet tosses off swaggering little power-pop gems like \u201cGood Idea At The Time,\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s A Disaster\u201d and \u201cA Million Ways\u201d with a disarming effortlessness, the truth of the thought and craft that goes into their work is perhaps underscored by the fact that it\u2019s 2009, the group\u2019s debut came out in 2002, and we\u2019re still waiting on album number three.<\/p>\n

The apocalyptic riffing of \u201cNo Sign Of Life\u201d reminds me of Transcendence, another out-there, heavy-rock, avant-garde band.\u00a0 \u201cLet It Rain\u201d is somewhat out of character, and interesting for that, a pretty pop song with delicate harmonies.\u00a0 It\u2019s like they\u2019re throwing you a curveball by doing a song that\u2019s sort of sweet and sincere as opposed to their more typical snarky aggro-pop approach.\u00a0 Speaking of contrasts, \u201cCrash The Party\u201d starts off with an appropriately cacophonous explosion of thrashy trash rock, like the Stones after dropping acid and asking Bowie and Billie Joe Armstrong to sit in.\u00a0 And \u201cTelevision Television\u201d has more than a little \u201cRadio Radio\u201d-era Elvis Costello to it, that little punk edge hiding underneath.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe House Wins\u201d strikes a winningly sardonic closing note, a ringing, repeating guitar and piano riff and swirling retro-chic synthesizers underscoring a lyric that manages to be philosophical, dissolute and pretty all at once, a downbeat song with a celebratory feel. As on the rest of this album, OK Go swagger through the song while winking at you the entire time.\u00a0 Whatever the metaphysical point of that approach might be, the end result is an album full of songs that are catchy as hell and sucker-punch you from six or seven different directions at once.\u00a0 [Note: the recent deluxe edition of Oh No<\/i> also includes a disc full of terrific videos and is well worth it.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":29899,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[8401],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-41521","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-ok-go","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41521\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41521"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41521"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}