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In rap criticism, one of the most powerful endorsements you can make for a rapper is a simple, three-word phrase: “They’ve got bars.” I love that expression: It’s so concise and understated, yet it tells you nearly everything you need to know about a rapper’s appeal. There isn’t an equivalent expression in rock, but there really should be, because every now and then I encounter a band that’s so quick with a turn of phrase, so deadly with their prose, that all I can think is, “Damn, they’ve got bars.”
Case in point: the Milwaukee guitar-pop duo Ako, who cram so many great, droll lines into their two and a half-minute single “The One” that it takes both hands to count them. “I got this feeling running through my head/You’d rather be with someone easier instead” is a personal favorite, but the whole track is thick with them—and so is the rest of the young/old-beyond-their-years duo’s latest EP, Everything is OK.
Singer/guitarist Gabby Powell and guitarist Mark Soriano draw from a mighty charming pool of influences: “Shaking” has the barbed-wire prettiness of Camera Obscura; “Lazy Ezra” has echoes of Paramore’s periodic stabs at dance-punk, and the whole EP strikes a nonchalant, personable balance between modern emo/pop-punk and classic, C86 jangle. It’s a cool sound, but it’s the pithy songwriting that really sells it. Like I said, they’ve got bars.
Below you can stream the video for “The One,” along with the entire EP. The band plays Company Brewing with Tigernite and North by North on Thursday, July 19.
