The Ok-Ok’s are an indie rock band from Central PA. I don’t know anything about them. The guitarist in the band is Isaac Swartz and he recently released an album under the name Malcolm called Romantic Melancholy (A Brief Period of Emotions). I honestly don’t know much about him either, but I saw an article about the release of this new album in FlyAfter5 and something in the first few sentences inspired me to click the link to the embedded single called “It Hurts”. I immediately loved it…the groove, the sound, the production.
In the days and weeks that followed, I gave the whole album a bunch of Spotify spins. At ten tracks, it’s only twenty-five minutes long making it very digestible in a single setting. I found there to be a very reasonable balance between diversity and consistency, well demonstrated by “It Hurts”, that first single I heard and the fourth track on the album. That song itself has two distinct parts, a positive sounding first half built on top of a solid beat and groovy bassline, and a slower moodier second half, again sitting on top of a beat and roving bassline. The two parts definitely belong together, but transmit very different emotions. Every part of the album works very well together, clearly the output of a single artist covering a particular era, but at the same time, there are enough different things going on to keep the whole collection very interesting.
Second to “It Hurts” for me is the ultra groovy “What Makes You Melt?”. To me, this track most clearly demonstrates the self-described alternative R&B sound of the project. It oozes with R&B sensibilities with an overall atmosphere and spaciousness that is transformed into high energy by adding an uptempo drum loop under different sections of the song. It’s very tastefully done and is the one element of this record that pulls me back time and again.