OK Go
Oh No (Capitol)
by Marc Hirsh
OK Go
Oh No (Capitol)
by Marc Hirsh
originally published in Amplifier, September-October 2005
On OK Go’s second album, the decay of goodness is
met with
the conviction that if everything insists on going to hell, somebody
might as
well play us out. Musically, Oh No is
muscular and voracious – there are affectionate grabs from Sweet, the
Zombies,
the Pixies and the Cars, not to mention one particularly swell melding
of
Prince and T. Rex – but the lyrics present a different picture,
focusing on a
bleak worldview in songs like “A Good Idea At The Time,” which replies
to
“Sympathy For The Devil” and discovers that mankind doesn’t need any
help in
order to fuck things up good. Best of all is “The House Wins,” in which
Damian
Kulash does his best Ray Davies impersonation, in both voice and topic,
and
realizes that if the world hasn’t managed to sustain simple decency for
any
extended period of time by now, it probably never will.