Los Angeles-based power pop band OK Go have become so well known for their extraordinary music videos (their viral video for “Here It Goes Again” basically revived the art of the music video), that I think sometimes people forget that they are still a touring band, writing and releasing new music.
Arriving at the Bellwether last Friday night, I was clearly wrong. The line to enter the venue was around the block and then some. When I finally got inside, the line for merch was stretching into the next room. I had vastly underestimated the passionate following the band had outside of their videos. The show to come would show why.
Taking a prime spot in the balcony, I enjoyed a prime 2000’s indie rock mix playing over the speakers until L.A. Exes took the stage. I was familiar with the group, having enjoyed their album Get Some back in 2021, but I had not kept up with them recently. Dressed in matching burgundy suits, the band brought the style of 80’s groups like The Romantics to the stage, but a sound that melded the classic girl groups of the 60’s with the modern pop rock of bands like The Beaches. While the group were hampered by a poor vocal mix for the first two and a half songs, once the sound person got things sorted out, the band’s songs were really able to take-off. The band brought out some of their 2021 bops like “Skinny Dipping” and “Temporary Goodbye” and new tracks like “I Don’t Wanna Be Poly”. They closed their set with the bubbly “Baby Let’s Pretend” and a cover of the classic Cranberries song “Linger”. Here’s hoping the opening slot on this tour helps this band gain some new fans so they can hire their own sound person for future tours and avoid vocal mix snafus.
The venue was packed by the time OK Go took the stage. With confetti raining down as they band launched into the euphoric “This Too Shall Pass”, it was clear the band wanted every moment of the show to have a sense of wonderment, much in the same way their videos are always awe-inspiring. Frontman Damian Kulash went into the audience to the fans hopping before rejoining the band onstage and donning a guitar for the crunchy “Get Over It”. This single, which launched the band onto the music scene and first made me a fan of the band way back in 2002, sounded great live, with the audience joining the band for the loud “hey” in the chorus.
Being a newbie to the Ok Go live show, I was then surprised as Damian asked the audience if they had any questions. The first question was more of a request, asking the band to do Les Miserable. This did confuse me a bit, but apparently it too was a part of OK Go lore, as Damian explained that in the past, they had broken out into parts of the famed musical when faced with technical issues. Still, Kulash and bandmate Tim Nordwind obliged, launching into a spirited song from the musical together. The audience ate it up, and I could only laugh at the wackiness of it all (while appreciating that Nordwind actually had a pretty solid voice).
The band returned to their own music then, playing “I Won’t Let You Down”, followed by the first new songs of the night, “Take Me With You” and “A Good Good Day At Last”. These came from their recently release And the Adjacent Possible, which you hopefully listened to back in our New Music Friday of April 11th. As the band returned to older tracks like “White Knuckles” and “The Writing’s On the Wall”, I began to appreciate how the band’s influences and sound also owed a debt to Prince‘s party anthems, especially during songs where Kulash went into a falsetto.
For “Shooting the Moon”, Kulash discussed how the song was from the POV of someone in denial of the moon landing, while the crew set-up a table of various bells for the band to play with the song. This was quite an enjoyable bit of musical choreography as all four members let their bells chime. Once this was finished, Kulash entered the audience again with an acoustic guitar to play the sad (by OK Go standards) “This is How It Ends” solo, while the bell table was put away. Once finished, Kulash returned to the stage to rejoin the band for “Needing/Getting”.
At one point, Kulash took more questions for the audience, answering a little girl’s query about the dogs in the “White Knuckles” video, and revealing that one of the dogs from that video was his own dog, and some of the issues his untrained pup caused when attempting to film. There were actually a surprisingly lot of parents with their young kids at the show, exposing them to live music at a young age. Ok Go is a pretty safe band for this, as their songs don’t contain any R-rated words and their antics are family-friendly. The band’s own families were in the audience, as Kulash dedicated the excellent new track “Better Than This” to their wives.
The band closed out their main set with the bouncy “Upside Down & Inside Out” and their hit single “Here It Goes Again”, which had the audience jumping. Of course there was an encore. The band came out and played the serene “A Stone Only Rolls Downhill”, followed by “Bye Bye Baby” and “The One Moment”.
Ok Go are as much fun as a band onstage as they are in their videos, and I’m glad they’ve cultivated a loyal following IRL. See them on tour and listen to their new album here.
The Indy Review 