[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H5bUxe3v9g[/youtube]

Sometimes I can be a real sucker for the cool.  And to be honest, I haven’t listened to much new music this past year or two, so with a few extra bucks in my pocket and a well-produced NPR segment on new music on the radio, I’m ripe for the cool’s bidding.  At least I’m not ravaging Starbuck’s checkout line tunes…anymore.  Actually, as I think about it, the only music I purchased (a loose and loaded word in music these days) during 2009 was Pearl Jam’s Backspacer and two oldie replacements: Citzen Cope’s Greenwood and the perfect It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back by Public Enemy.  By the way, I demand all three be tetris-tiled up in your ipods– Pearl Jam and Public Enemy are political Rural posts for another day.

For me, the consumption and discovery of new music is not a regular occurrence and it can’t be tracked with the tides.  In between these evolutionary moments I fill up on too much Frat-Rock and Metal (I always have Metal).    In 2005, between recording Touch of Class and Swallowed by The Wolf I dug into bands like Razorlight, …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, Say Anything, Aimee Mann, and The White Stripes while cultivating my passion for old Sad Bastard music ie. The Band, Van Morrison, Tom Waits, and Bob Dylan.  All I can say is that when I dig into new music, when I’m looking for answers– these seem to be the times when I become more creatively rigorous.  It’s a good feeling and, if the planets align, songs begin to develop, albums start coming together.

I knew nothing about Ok Go when they popped in for an interview on Morning edition last week– I didn’t even know that they were the band from the infamous  treadmill video.  Although their NPR interview was extremely pretentious and the humor annoyingly nerdy and esoteric (as some of their concept-album is), the music carried something that stayed with me after the radio program was long gone.  It had a pulse– it carried threads that the band members claimed wrapped a common concept– music born from the words of an old book by General A. J. Pleasonton in 1876 titled The Influence of the Blue Ray of the Sunlight and of the Blue Colour of the Sky.  So it occurred to me that although these might not be rural men whom I’d sit at the Stardust One with, their musical priorities and intentions seem to be something I share.  And with a little help from Fredonia’s own Dave Fridmann, master of the cosmic Flaming Lip’s sound, I decided to break back into the world of the unknown melody.

Slim’s Top Ten is full of this Super-Cool-Kid rock, so I’m pretty sure there’s a place for Ok Go’s Of the Blue Colour of The Sky (2010) as we enter a new decade with potential for new RuralMan favorites.  It rocks and grooves.  It’s a bit heavy and trippy.  It bends the ear and mind.  I can’t stop listening.

PS. Check the Prince-scream during “Skyscrapers.”

New Music So We Don't Turn Into Old People As We Grow Old: OK Go is a post from: Rural Minority