Of The Blue Colour of the Sky

Propelled to the dizzying heights of stardom through the viral success of their endlessly parodied treadmill video for the song ‘Here It Goes Again’, Ok Go are now releasing their third album.

After having apparently exhausted the standard formula for catchy, cheery and hook-driven power-pop on their previous two records, the American quartet has now produced a darker, electro-funk concept-album based on an obscure nineteenth century book which results in the liner notes assigning colours to themes and arranging the lyrics in a variety of strange, if mildly interesting graphs.

‘WTF?’, the first song of the album, immediately makes the self-confessed influence of Prince noticeable, with a droning, fuzzy bass line providing the backdrop to Kulash’s newfound falsetto vocals and funky guitar chords. Unfortunately, ‘WTF?”’, is also the best song of the album, as it’s coolness and power is never matched by any of the remaining songs, particularly in the second half of the record.

The rest of the record is dominated too much by the influences and styles that Ok Go are trying to emulate without ever emerging as the genuine and original work of the band. Fuzz bass and drums predominate; guitars are relegated to the sidelines. Whereas ‘This Too Shall Pass’ and ‘All Is Not Lost’ continue to feature dense and interplaying layers of sound, this is reduced with the opening of ‘Skyscrapers’, leaving minimalist songs that sound dull and lacking in energy.

The synthesizer-driven ‘End Love’ comes across as a boring and uninspired disco re-hash and ‘Last Leaf’ is a surprisingly energy-less folk number, both of which seemed very distant in comparison to the punchy onset of the record.

While Ok Go should be applauded for attempting to take their sound to new territories, in _Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky_ this has resulted in a collection of initially good songs that simply peters off into a record of uninteresting, if still re-listenable pop songs.