Since releasing the fun-on-treadmills-on-a-budget clip for their punchy song “Here It Goes Again” nearly two decades ago, the Los Angeles-via-Chicago band OK Go has become as known for its visual offerings as it has for its music. But when you strip away the Rube Goldberg machines, trompe l’oeil trickery, and cameos from The Muppets, a solid power-pop band emerges. And the Adjacent Possible, the band’s first full-length since 2014’s Hungry Ghosts, shows how their 21st-century exploding of the ideals laid down by the likes of Rockford-hewn Cheap Trick and the Columbia College-birthed Material Issue is catchy even when it isn’t eye-catching.
Not that the band has completely given up on video — the new album’s lead single, the blissed-out “A Stone Only Rolls Downhill,” was accompanied by a video that was shot on 64 iPhones, which were then arranged into matrices and cascades to create fractured yet cohesive imagery. That song’s loose-limbed take on psych-pop is sneakily bummed-out; while the backing vocals reiterate the time-tested pop refrains of “it’ll all be all right” and “it’ll all be just fine,” that’s in response to frontman Damian Kulash lamenting that he couldn’t say those things in good faith. That gritted-teeth smile is appropriate to both the power-pop paradigm and the current day’s mood.
Much of And the Adjacent Possible blends wonder with world-weariness. The swirling slow dance “Fantasy Vs. Fantasy” is awash in nostalgia and hope, with a climactic key change that reveals its romantic fervor’s urgency. “Take Me With You” is a hip-shaking funk-pop cut where Kulash’s Bowie-channeling cool façade is betrayed by his longing (“Whatever the mystic whispering voices tell you/ I need to hear them, too,” he pleads at one point). The album’s massive, primary-hued sonics include headphone-ready detailing inside the maximalism; the fresh-squeezed-juicy guitar solo on “Love” feels lifted from the college-radio vaults, while the exquisitely arranged orchestra that rises up on “This Is How It Ends” offers a counterpoint to Kulash’s existentially bothered wail.
And the Adjacent Possible ends with “Don’t Give Up Now,” a slowly blossoming offer of comfort to someone who’s “hurting worse than a person deserves.” (Kulash told NME that he, bassist Tim Nordwind, and lead guitarist Andy Ross wrote the song for a friend of the band who’d been diagnosed with cancer.) it eventually crests into a wordless hymn, Kulash and his bandmates offering comfort and solidarity as more instruments tangle around them, forming a tight musical embrace in an effort to keep the pain away. It’s a fitting parting statement from a band who have become well-known for using creativity as a buttress against the world’s stasis and aggravation.
