…is the new OK Go. It’s called “[Some Pretentious Name That Proves We Read A Lot]“, whatever, the title’s not important. It has nothing to do with the bad assery that is the actual music.

Where did we leave off with these guys? They had a breakthrough album a couple of years ago that they were able to milk for all it was worth. You know why? Because it was full of great songs. There’s no mystery here. Yeah, they had the videos, they were a gimmick to draw people in. But the music sold itself, and without the music those videos wouldn’t mean a damn thing. Good music sells itself.

Now, here we are in 2010. The boys have had a long time to think about what they wanted to do next. Oh No was poppy and unique, but it wasn’t definitive. It was excellent, but still I wanted to hear what they would do next.

So what do they do? They call Dave Fridmann and say, “Hey Dave, Go here. I’ll tell you what we’d really love. We’d love to make an album with you that sounds like the Flaming Lips and Prince had a baby.”

And Dave says, “Ok!”

This album feels definitive. It has presence. It stands up in a room full of similar albums and announces itself proudly. There is an urgency about it that was also there on Oh No—a great mark for a band. The best music is the most desperate, the stuff that is made with everyone’s asses on the line. Every Clash song sounds like something huge and awful is about to happen. The Stones at their best sound like they are about to fall apart.

No one makes desperate music anymore, but this is close. It’s urgent.

What we get from it is a progression. That’s what an artist should strive for. No one can predict where tastes will go, or whether an album will be a hit. But what you CAN do is buckle down and work to find new directions, new ideas, new ways of saying things that don’t bore us to death. The progression itself doesn’t have to be groundbreaking. I can imagine writing an algorithm that would take Oh No as the input and spit out this new album. I guess that means it’s formulaic, but the formulas are so tastefully applied that you never feel like you’re listening to a product. It feels like an adventure. It weaves in and out, from the weird 5/4 of “WTF?” to the sea shanty ramble of “Needing/Getting” to the cool groove of “Skyscrapers”. At the end, you feel like you’ve been somewhere.

But this album will never sell. It will never be the hit that Oh No was, and that’s because it’s not nearly as accessible—which is such a stupid and dirty word. The songs are written just as well, the production is just as good if not better, but because the average person won’t “get it”, it’s “less accessible” and therefore less valuable to the public. I guess making a badass, fuzzed-out pop-funk record isn’t good enough. I hope I’m proven wrong, but I can’t imagine a record like this having the same impact as Oh No. It’s always sad when the best music doesn’t get a fair shake.