Austin's Oh No! Oh My! are like a nice boyfriend you wish you could get mad at once in awhile, if only to scracth behind their pleasant veneer and unleash something new and potentially revealing. The band debuted with its self-titled, self-released album in 2006, mottled with pleasurable little guitar numbers and dim synth explorations. Even its darker songs like "I Love You All the Time" buckled into the snappy and clappy realm after a couple of minutes, which was jarring but excusable. On this polished Dim Mak sampling the trio almost entirely strips the electric circuits, legging up resolutely into the twee region perhaps once and for all, with just a hint on the goofy "The Bike, Sir" of UK label mates the Mystery Jets' ephemerally interesting folk rock.
Twee is one of those je ne sais quoi genres that you simply know upon hearing giveaway elements-- in this case it's tones and plucks and human meowing, which you either want to eat up or throw up. Opener "Oh Be One" is a dorky play on words as well as a predictable rocking-horse shimmy on the acoustic guitar's top strings. The percussion is so homemade and understated (or undermixed), it's indiscernible from, say, traffic or footsteps: hands hitting each other, hands hitting hollow things with sticks, and so on. The lyrics don't help-- round and round goes the same line, "Yes you are my only hope/ Oh be one/ You're my only hope." The effect is simply: Really? This is the song?
"The Party Punch" fares better, depending on the same repetitive nature of the first track to play the same kind of happy, hop-skippy note patterns on the acoustic guitar. Off-key yelps give way to shouts peppering the end of verses. Soon the key changes to a deeper, resolved melody supporting, "No, I don't even care" and non-verbal, sustained vocal coos until the close. The effect is still frustratingly understated, like one musician was sick and couldn't make it to the studio (there is no bass player in the band-- that might be it).
With "A Pirate's Anthem" and "Our Mouths Were Wet" the group betrays their strange and maybe unconscious affinity for Modest Mouse: The rangy, whiny electric guitars of MM's early career and the sweetened electronics of their latest stuff both appear on "Our Mouths". The plodding rhythm of "Anthem" is peppered with cymbals plowed too quietly, a less rambunctious version of a We Were Dead... track. The moments of mediocre vocals and delicate piano rounds-- the heaviest, fullest moments-- stand up, because just as their debut album, ONOM's strongest expressions are the rarest ones; their interest is in scuttling acoustics and post-it sized, private statements, but it's the glimpses of raging passion that are the most riveting.
