If OK Go is a band, it’s important to note that they have a new album coming out in a few days. If OK Go is a band, it would be critical to know that Hungry Ghosts will be like no OK Go album before it, submerging their alt-pop sound into glitchy synthesizer pop. If OK Go is a band, people will be at the concert because it is the last possible chance to hear the new songs before the album is released four days later.
But OK Go is not a band. OK Go is the childlike feeling of wonder stretched out over every form of communication. Their single-take music videos have revitalized the medium; by now it’s almost impossible to separate the treadmills and Rube Goldberg machines from chords and drumbeats. Their live act is less a concert and more a series of jumpsuit-clad spectacles (Video projectors! Neon signs! Audience-as-instrument demonstrations!) all set to OK Go music. OK Go writes op-eds in the New York Times. OK Go is getting retweeted by the president. You can like OK Go without liking their music, the same way you can like a parade without liking the high school marching band.
“Honestly, record making and video making and show making require a consistent spirit,” says bassist Tim Nordwind. “We try to treat it all like it’s our own blank canvas to fill. I’m okay with people thinking of us as our videos before our music.”
If there is an exact opposite extreme in music construction, the flip side of a band built on every form of mass communication, Nordwind would be there too. For much of its existence, his side project hadn’t connected in the most basic way possible. Where OK Go’s new-found devotion to electronica came from spending too much time together (“We’d been touring,” says Nordwind, “and on the road we were really only able to write on computers, sketching out ideas by programing synths and drums. When we came to the studio to record, everyone had demos they wanted to try—we realized we liked the way they sounded as is”), his duo Pyyramids had started recording music together before ever meeting in person.
Pyyramids is Nordwind and Milwaukee’s own He Say, She Say frontwoman Drea Smith. He was introduced to the He Say, She Say singer through a mutual friend over email. Their first messages were about a shared love of early post punk and Happy Mondays-era Manchester. Their next emails were demos. By the time the band met in person, they were already well into exploring the Brit-friendly moodiness of last year’s Brightest Darkest Day.
Keep the decade, tweak the choice of genre, and you have the origins Hungry Ghosts as a let’s-keep-it-synthy album.
“We grew up in the ’80s,” says Nordwind. “It seemed like synth was something other bands were bringing back. We wanted to explore it in more of a rocking pop context.
“It’s something we might continue with in the future,” he says. “Some of the most exciting production is coming from EDM and hip-hop.”
It’s not quite EDM or Damian Kulash freestyling, but the results will be as much “The Writing’s On the Wall” as “Another Set of Issues,” a buzzing base drone with bubbles of optimistic synth OK Go premiered last week.
Hungry Ghosts was put to bed last year while Drea Smith worked on her solo album. While OK Go fans brace for the new album, Nordwind is ready to reopen Pyyramids.
“I have already started to have dreams with new Pyyramids songs,” says Nordwind.
But while he formulates new music with his more sullen second project, you should definitely watch his first project celebrate life’s wonderment and joy.
“I will tell you this,” Nordwind hints of OK Go’s Milwaukee event, “there will be a shit ton of confetti.”
OK Go headline the Turner Hall Ballroom on Friday, October 10th at 8 p.m.
