Of The Blue Color of The Sky By Ok Go

On their new album, Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky, Chicago pop-rockers, Ok Go, have moved infinite light years away from any music that you might think you know them for, and, even though it’s not possible, they’ve moved even further away from that catchy-as-all-hell treadmill video. On their first two albums they covered a radio-friendly but also solid and bouncing modern pop-rock sound. On this, their third record, they jump straight into an eclectic and understated beat with gauzy, almost inaudible vocals.

“WTF?” is the first single and is very aptly named as this is more than likely to be what you’re thinking as the slow guitars slide into the background of the song and no rhythm comes to pick the listener up. It sounds something like My Morning Jacket doing a bad Prince cover. Even the guitar solo is stretched and strained.

When the band throws some piano into their mixture, like on “This Too Shall Pass,” the music becomes slightly better. And “All Is Not Lost” has a stronger drum sound to carry the song too. There aren’t too many other highlights, and you’ll soon gather that it’s an album with little to no variety and borders on depressing.

Indeed, the only place where Ok Go’s new sound fits in nicely with the song is on “I Want You So Bad, I Can’t Breathe” because the person singing the song should have soft vocals due to lack of breath, and this is exactly what Damian Kulash sounds like – like he has no breath to spare for singing.

Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky gets one and a half stars mainly because you might be able to appreciate the type of aural games the band wants to play, even if you’re unlikely to want to pay to listen to them at all.