February 15, 2010

OK Go//This Too Shall Pass (Live)

Marching Monday Mail!
What is Monday Mail?

Hello and happy Valentine’s Day hangover/President’s Day. Yet again, here I am at the office when it seems like everyone else in the world is off. On top of that, I think I also may have had my all time worst MTA experience this morning getting to work. It took me seven trains/buses and an hour and fifteen minutes to get from my apartment in Brooklyn to Lower Manhattan. It usually takes me one train and 20 minutes. In fact all three recent “holidays” (MLK, SnOMG and today) have been transit nightmares. What gives!?

Moving on, do you guys know about VSL aka The Very Short List? It’s a daily email about one cool thing, whether it’s a blog, album, video, book, etc. Last week, they sent an email about this new video (below) from Chicago (now LA) band OK Go. It said:

It may come as a surprise that the dancing treadmill guys from YouTube are actually a legitimate band. But we suggest checking out OK Go’s latest and most inventive music video, featuring “This Too Shall Pass,” from their new album, Of the Color of the Blue Sky.

Dressed in deep purple marching band suits and equipped with accordion, xylophone, bass drum and snare (and eventually the entire Notre Dame marching band), OK Go perform in a swampy field on an overcast day. And they really are performing. Unlike with their previous videos, in which band members lip-sync to a prerecorded track, this song was recorded during the shoot—an impressive feat that lends the video the sort of perfect imperfection that makes OK Go endearing, funny and fun to watch. Not to mention the song itself, which is a catchy tune worthy of both your computer and your stereo.

You may remember OK Go (as I do) from their early 2000s hit, “Get Over It.” While I thought that track walked the line of delightfully poppy/annoyingly grating, erring more toward the obnoxious, this song is less prone to being potentially irritating. Chalk it up to the tubas or something. I can get down.

“This too shall pass” probably would have been a good attitude to adopt this morning while stuck in the bowels of subway hell. Of course, easier said than done. Have you ever been in the Canal Street JMZ station? That place is not pretty.


This Too Shall Pass.mp3

You know you can't keep letting it get you down
And you can't keep dragging that dead weight around.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks for posting the audio! The free download from OK GO is having some difficulties today...

CGrodnik said...
This comment has been removed by the author.