OKGo at the Nokia theater on Saturday November 27th, Los Angl;es: Like An Amusement Park -by Alyson Camus

What about the music you are gonna ask? I almost forgot about it, I was too distracted by the mountains of confetti, the laser guitar, the talking, the LED powered jackets, the talking, the 3D video, the glowing furry guitars, and did I mention the talking?

There were so many things going on visually Saturday night at the Nokia theater, you would probably have thought the music had become an accessory, only reduced to a part of the show,… but what a show! The four newly LA residents are true entertainers and know how to put on a party for the senses.

But to start with it, the music is a little bit all over the place, so hard to characterize because it changes from one song to another, like from a band which could not exactly find its own voice and sound. If Prince’s funkiness is obviously a big influence on songs like ‘White knuckles’, you could say that many songs have this punchy rhythms and bouncing riffs thanks to Dan Konopka‘s drums and Tim Nordwind’s bass, and this hand-clapping-eternal-youth-exuberance, thanks to Andy Ross and Damian Kulash’s guitars, quite truly revealing itself on stage.

The four of them dressed-up in assorted blue, red, yellow and green suits, started the show with ‘Do what you want’, arriving on stage and shouting a ‘How do you do Los Angeles’, in front of a big screen projecting their own images mixed with video-clips, while the ceiling of the theater was pouring an avalanche of multicolor confetti. And the confetti guns were in full use all show long, following each of the sound explosion, a sound full of influences and quite classic rock for a Indie band, a little nostalgic of the 90’s, and not too far away from Weezer’s at times. But there is more than the sound, this is a band which became famous for its videos, and we got to see one, a real special one.

‘No matter how awesome you are, do not play your single hit three times’ shouted Damian Kulash in the middle of the show, talking about memories of concerts of his youth, ‘But today, we’re going to break the rule!’ and they played the video of a song they had just sung, ‘White Knuckles’ but it has precisely the awesomeness to be in 3D, and rescue dogs began jumping over our heads. We had been provided with old-fashioned 3D glasses at the entrance, yeah, very old-fashioned, they were definitively no Disney!

They did a strip down version of ‘Return’, with… hand bells! ‘This was so sweet’ said someone in the crowd.

Damian Kulash’s good nature and humor does a lot for the show, as he is constantly interacting with the crowd, making fun of people’s overexposed faces when it takes a picture of the public, teasing the quiet audience by saying that they must ‘feel Japanese about the music’, since Japanese people ‘want to hear everything and are always very quiet at shows’, or declaring his love for Thanksgiving, ‘The only holiday not fucked up by the church or the state!’

And the crowd loved him as he went in the middle of the pit to do an acoustic version of ‘Last Leaf’, just after declaring, ‘This is a song by the Suicidal Tendencies,…. Not-true-at-all!’ What a joker.

Summer Darling, with their dark and big distorted sound, and A Fine Frenzy, with Alison Sudol’s bright big voice and their bouncing folk alternating with lush ballads, were opening for OKGo and one of the members of Summer Darling came back on stage to play ‘Get over it’, the three bands having successively declared their mutual affection for each other, some love fest!