(Capitol/EMI)

The world’s most downloaded video artists strike again

It’s hard to take OK Go seriously, although god knows this album is trying its hardest. There’s the issue of the inconsistency of their past output: the unashamed top-40 punk lite of Get Over It, low-key funk in A Million Ways To Be Cruel, They Might Be Giants-esque nerd-pop in Here It Goes Again. Then there’s their gimmicky online viral videos, like the one with the elaborate dance in the backyard, or the one with treadmills. So, whether or not this is the case, they appear like a band desperately searching for success by insincerely adopting trends and cynically manipulating online media. Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky attempts to change this image, from the portentous title to the liner notes and cover, which are abstract graphical representations of the album’s lyrical content. Musically, OTBCOTS smacks of two things: their producer, Dave Fridmann (famous for his work with the Flaming Lips) and Prince. Fridmann’s love of overcompression and crunchy effects is all over this one: the opener, WTF?, gave me a WTF moment when I inserted the disc to be greeted with staticky blasts of white noise. But Sunn O))) this ain’t, and soon enough the Prince influences come creeping in, as in subdued soul number Skyscrapers. The problem, aside from the overcompressed mastering job, is that as much as OK Go are trying to expand their sound, they still come off as remarkably insincere about it; perhaps they should stick to the commercial stuff and the concomitant gimmick videos.

**˝

CHAD PARKHILL

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