Word: ok
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...popularization of computers promises to make life at Harvard a lot nicer. But before Harvard's computer plans get the final OK, the Holyoke Center bureaucrats had better make sure that that nice life is not limited to a select...
Like the old nursery rhyme. "Ring Around the Rosies"--with its hidden suggestions of the bubonic plague--these songs translate the horrors of the adult world into children's language. The death, madness, and devil rituals on this EP may be common but Oh-Ok's handling of them in childish terms is quite original, something along the lines of Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit", which turned an acid trip into an Alice-in-Wonderland fairy tale...
...Ok pattern their lyrics, both in language and imagery, on the speech used in most children's books. The songs usually consist of simple repetitions, or parallel sentence structures; and the phrasing of such lines as "What say you to me good woman?" suggests the formal, slightly archaic tone of a fairy tale. And phrases like "valley of the painted horse", and a character named "Rapture" come right out of the fantasy worlds created for and by children. Oh-Ok's lyrics may be simple, but they are certainly not straightforward. Rather, they prefer to make their songs fragmented...
NONE of the other songs on this EP really match "Such 'n' Such" for the subtle way in which a nightmare casts a long shadow over playful innocence. Nevertheless, Oh-Ok does succeed in balancing the eerie, depressive tone of such songs as "Choukoutien" and "Elaine's Song" against the quiet, lightweight charm of numbers like "Straight" of "Giddy Up." And throughout the album, Oh-Ok manage to sustain a surreal, dreamlike atmosphere, without resorting to complicated, labored sound effects that would undermine this EP's simple, uncluttered quality...
INEVITABLY, Oh-Ok is going to be compared with their fellow Athens Ga, band, REM, especially since Linda Stipe is the sister of Michael, lead singer for REM. And, in fact, Oh-Ok and REM do have many common elements: guitar sounds, vague lyrics, and dream-like atmospheres. Fortunately, however. Oh-Ok does not try to match REM for lyrical ambiguity. Although Hopper and Stipe do create deceptive verbal tricks, they do not slur and clip their vocals to the extent that Michael Stipe does. REM presents the listener with an insoluable puzzle; with each new listening one continually hears...