Famed for their viral music videos, including the Grammy Award-winning “Here It Goes Again” treadmill dance routine, alternative rock band OK Go has reached millions in their 15 years of music. This week, fans in Phoenix will be celebrating the music group’s first ever performance in Arizona’s capital.
Following the Oct. 14 release of their fourth album, “Hungry Ghosts,” OK Go will be taking the Crescent Ballroom stage on Friday. The group will be joined by local DJ Jared Alan.
The performance will not disappoint veterans of OK Go concerts seeking a different experience. Using creative means of presenting songs to the audience, including videos, the band hopes to make an innovative connection with fans.
“This time around we’ve put together a whole new show,” bassist Tim Nordwind said. “There’s a lot of interactivity between us and the audience. It’s also quite a bit of a multimedia show.”
The Crescent Ballroom, a local venue that unites audiences with performers almost daily, may be the perfect location for a deeper fan-band relationship to breed. Nordwind’s description of the band’s ideal concerts for the tour — “smaller, more intimate shows to reconnect with our fans” — mirrors the venue’s typical performances.
Although their new show was meant for larger venues and audiences, the music group will not hold back its enormous spirit.
“There’ll be a lot of energy, basically just like a really big party. (We’re) trying to create somewhat of an emotional art, so that it feels larger than a rock show,” Nordwind said.
Above all, the band is dedicated to creating an experience for the audience to remember.
“They’re half the reason why we do this,” Nordwind said.
Fans of the band, he said, “have always been incredibly good to us.”
PREVIOUS METRONOME: Ana Tijoux at the Crescent Ballroom
OK Go’s “Hungry Ghosts” is electricity. Previewed by their “Upside Out” EP, the album holds an aura of excitement — exemplified by “Turn Up the Radio,” a fun musical arrangement credited for bringing the album’s title to life — and ends with the soothing yet spine-tingling “Lullaby.”
With “Hungry Ghosts,” the band has taken a turn from previous records. Always the kings of experimentation in the music field, the group of four chose to focus more on their pop-based side, rather than their typical rock-inspired style.
“It sort of channels the spirit of what we grew up to, listening to the ‘80s on the radio,” Nordwind said. He cited Madonna as one of many musical inspirations for the record.
OK Go also brought elements of electronic dance music and hip hop to Hungry Ghosts. This brought the band to introduce more electronic aspects to the album than usual, in order to achieve “cutting edge production,” as opposed to their “fairly traditional” older records, Nordwind said.
“Our songwriting has gotten a lot more spontaneous and adventurous and even, especially sonically, experimental,” he said. “Because of that, we’ve looked to writing with untraditional instruments, like synthesizers.”
The manipulation of sonic elements aided the band in the exploration of darker tunes as well. Nordwind’s favorite song to perform, “Obsession,” explores the eerie feeling of being, as the song title suggests, obsessed.
Though fans may miss the spiteful rock of OK Go’s 2009 hit “Get Over It,” along with the delightfully raw melodies like my personal favorite, “Needing/Getting,” some aspects of OK Go will never change. “Hungry Ghosts” continues their trend of echoes of voices and upbeat vibes, even through the paradoxical expression of less-than-cheerful thoughts. Nordwind said the content of the album was primarily fun, but “a cathartic, emotional spirit as well.”
This definition of “Hungry Ghosts” defines OK Go’s identity, as well — a juxtaposition between party record and sentiment.
“We’re celebrating the fact that we are human beings that are capable of having a time of emotion,” Nordwind said. “If I were to describe our music, it would be ‘a part of the human experience.’”
Linked to the new album is another reason to believe OK Go has not slipped from their distinctiveness: the music video for “The Writing’s On the Wall,” which allowed OK Go to become the most recent MTV Video Music Award winner for “Best Visual Effects.” The style of video matches the originality that granted OK Go fame in the first place, by shedding light on the band’s creativity through optical illusions.
“I don’t think we’ve made a very conscious effort to become video makers, but when we started noticing that people liked it a lot, it made sense,” Nordwind said, speaking on the reason his band has continued filming innovative one-take music videos after their first and “accidental” viral creation for the song “A Million Ways.”
Another reason these videos won’t be eliminated anytime soon is because of the responses; many fans have made custom versions of them after being inspired by their view. Nordwind believed much of this was thanks to the ability of OK Go’s music videos to inspire “wonderment and joy,” as well as the belief that fans could accomplish their own ideas.
“We’re right on the edge of making things that are somewhat, seemingly impossible to make, but we somehow just kind of eke it out of them,” he said. “I think that’s fun for people to watch.”
I encourage everyone to take a listen to “Hungry Ghosts” here.
Contact the columnist at emily.liu@asu.edu
