From an outside perspective, it might look like OK Go has been off the map — or on hiatus — for almost a decade. But according to bassist and founding member Tim Nordwind, their new album “And the Adjacent Possible” and subsequent return to tour is a culmination of work done over those past ten years.
“We’ve kind of been working this entire time, but then also taking time off for other projects,” Nordwind, a DePaul alum, said. “But all the while writing, sending demos back and forth and getting into the studio with each other when we could.”
The band played at Chicago’s Riviera Theatre on Friday, April 25 as part of their “And the Adjacent Possible” tour. Singer Damian Kulash, bassist Nordwind, guitarist Andy Ross and drummer Dan Konopka, accompanied by outrageous amounts of confetti, played old and new songs for the crowd.
Concertgoer Alec Rijik has been a fan of OK Go for a while, but went on a listening “kick” just before the album dropped.
“I saw they were releasing an album. I’m like, f— yeah,” Rijik said. “I like it. I think it’s fun. I like how they’re kind of leaning into … this direction of like, it’s a little bit bubblier, it’s a little bit synth-y, but I do like their grittier old stuff.”
“And the Adjacent Possible” does mark a change for the Chicago-formed band — since their last album, 2005’s “Oh No,” band members got married, had children, directed and acted in films and, as Nordwind put it, “live(d) a little bit of life.”
“I think it gave us a really nice perspective to make a fifth record,” Nordwind said. “And because of that, I think we just felt a lot more comfortable and we got to work on things, put it away, come back to it, and have the sort of perspective that we haven’t normally had in the past. As a result, I think we made, like, my favorite record of ours we’ve ever made.”
OK Go is well-known for their creative music videos — their video dancing on treadmills has 67 million views on YouTube. That’s how concertgoer Heather Sullivan became a fan.
“(I like) a lot of the early stuff for sure,” Sullivan said. “Been a fan ever since the treadmill video.”
The band has also filmed videos in zero gravity, in slow motion and with a giant Rube Goldberg machine. The new album is no exception.
As part of the release, the band made a music video for their song “Love” featuring 60 mirrors, 29 robotic arms and a ton of planning — about five months before the team travelled to Budapest to film.
“But then, of course, you get to the situation itself, and you realize, like, what we thought would work here doesn’t, and so we’ve got to sort of rework things a little bit,” Nordwind said.
He said for this shoot, there was a lot of emotion in the room because the crew and team were so close.
“I think that’s sort of typical in a lot of our videos, because we’re … in the room that really is so collaborative,” Nordwind said. “Everyone in the room is a data point in how this thing can be accomplished. … It’s such a wonderful exercise in human collaboration.”
He said that because so many moving pieces needed to go exactly right, the shoot was a bit stressful.
“This is the longest we’ve gotten in the process where we had absolutely nothing, we didn’t know if we were gonna get it,” he said. “This is a really, really nerve-racking thing. … We have such an amazing crew working on this with us who, as soon as we got to the end of it, they were resetting right away, you know, getting the robots back to their first position. It was kind of a wild experience.”
Along with “Love,” the band played songs with handbells, from the box seats and with high energy — singer Kulash ran around the theatre, climbed the barricade, answered audience questions and cracked jokes. Every few songs, another blast of confetti sent the crowd cheering.
During the show, Kulash said he sometimes feels guilty, in the state of today’s world, to be singing songs about how “everything’s going to be okay.” But he said the band’s goal in doing so is to spread a bit of positivity even when things do feel tough — to have fun and dance it out.
That was met with huge cheers from the crowd. Dance they did, and the crowd sang along to every song — including the new ones.
“I think we’ve always felt like every record, we have made forward progress,” Nordwind said. “And with this one, because of the time in between the two records, it feels like we’ve made twice the forward progress. … I feel totally excited about this one.”
Related Stories:
Stay informed with The DePaulia’s top stories,
delivered to your inbox every Monday.
