4 out of 5

Label: Paracadute

Produced by: Dave Fridmann, Tony Hoffer (track 8)

Who could’ve guessed that this would still be happening, almost ten years after that video you hated but sort of liked was everywhere?  Yes, you reason that bands like this continue to exist thanks to rampant fandom, but when you check in with OK Go, they’re not peddling the same shtick – which, to be clear, was an insanely catchy, well-written pop-rock shtick – as they were on their self-tited album, or Oh No, or Blue Colour…  Undoubtedly this is the same band, but they’ve taken advantage of the time to hone everything, from the depth and complexity of their music, to being a freaking inspirational business model of online support (accepting that it helps to have a start with a major label to get the fanbase to keep that going), to successfully shaping their Video Selves into a unique identity that goes beyond clever dance routine…  A version of this I don’t prefer is the visual artist / music artist blurred line of someone like Lady Gaga, who makes it difficult to separate one half from the other, whereas OK Go pick up the thread unraveled by, perhaps, a more underground music mentality, where the two worlds can exist exclusive from one another – and enjoyed as such – or mashed together for a joyous synthesis of sound and vision.  Hate the vids but dig the music; hate the music but dig the vids.  Your choice.  And encouraging this mentality are the very open bloggings and whatnots of, say, lead Damian Kulash, who, while he still struggles to not dip into semi-cheesy missives with his lyrics, seems to approach the music world with such an aw shucks zeal that it’s hard to completely brush them off as just a money grab.  …Especially given that your grudge should’ve run out a few years back, but I understand that we are grudge-holdy people and this is just what we do.

Still with me?  Anyhow.

Taking full advantage of Dave Fridmann’s house-of-production-wonders, Hungry Ghosts settles into a perfect middleground between the infectious pop-rock of Oh No and the glitchy layers of Blue Colour, thankfully favoring the glee on the former disc over the latter’s tendency toward moodiness.  Even when the tracks veer toward a more contemplative sound – ‘Another Set of Issues,’ ‘Bright as Your Eyes’ – the group remains mindful of keeping a note of positivity in the sound, making these tracks more emotionally varied than the somewhat straightforward happy / sad / rockout setup that’s apparent from the get-go of many of their songs.  Kulash remains mostly obsessed with relationships for his lyrics, but, as he grew comfortable with pushing his writing toward slightly more oblique territory on the previous disc, the trend continues, and Hungry isn’t as saddled with simple sentiments.  (They still happen, of course, just not as obviously or as frequently.  Kulash has trouble not being an optimist, it seems.)  The growth that the band displays, though, is perfectly reigned in by Fridmann, who knows how to let the blips and bleeps out of the closet without losing sight of what needs to be part of a song for it to shine; a quality I think we all suddenly glommed on with the Lips’ Soft Bulletin and is now perfectly summarized by opener ‘Upside Down & Inside Out,’ which is chopped up every which way to Sunday and still comes across like a radio-ready toe-tapping OK Go track.  Listening to the disc on headphones just brings out more of the disc’s depth: bits and pieces buried in the mix such that you realize you’d picked up on a subtle quality that was enhancing the song but hadn’t known it was an intended extra layer.

…Of course, this kind of pop magic is hard for any band to maintain for an entire album, and OK Go is still a group that has its indulgences which inevitably creep in.  The disc suddenly comes to a halt on track 8, ‘I Won’t Let You Down,’ which harkens back to the groups first couple releases as just a straight-ahead pop song, no real flourish or point.  Followup ‘The One Moment’ is a bit more orchestral, perhaps, but carries a similar mindset.  And then we get those too-precious tracks, the cheesy and clipped ‘If I Had a Mountain’ and closer ‘Lullaby,’ which unfortunately sandwich the fascinatingly dour ‘The Great Fire,’ which has a hard time sticking out amidst these last tracks.  Note that these are still acceptable OK Go songs, they’re just not up to the quality of the rest of the album.  But, I’m okay with the sequencing crunching these to the end.  It makes it a lot easier to see how excellent Hungry Ghosts is overall, and there’s so much originality strung together through the first 7 tracks that it easily carries you through the final portion, and indicates that we’re getting at least one release closer to an album that can ditch some of the filler and rock it out from start to finish.