Word: toning
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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FURTHERMORE WHAT, the debut from Oh-Ok, the latest band out of Athens. Ga., comes on like a decadent kiddies album, blending childlike innocence with childish perversity to set a tone that is, simultaneously harming and unsettling. The nursery-rhyme lyrics and the bright melodies on this six-song EP barely mask the obsessive, morbidity lurking beneath. In fact, the darker meanings are so tightly woven into the airy structure of the music that it becomes impossible to separate the perversity from the innocence...
...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 and oblique...
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...
...guitarist David Mcnair for his clear, ringing guitar playing (reminiscent of Peter Buck's guitar work for REM) and Stipe's prominent, graceful bass lines. Together, with Matthew Sweet's astute drumming, Stipe and Mcnair create a spare but rollicking sound that perfectly compliments the deceivingly playful tone of this...
Democratic members nonetheless professed amazement at the abrupt switch in tone. "If someone throws you down a well a hundred feet and then they haul you up fifty feet, you feel a lot better," observed Democratic Representative Larry Smith of Florida. "But you never would have been down there in the first place if they hadn't thrown you down." Israel's immediate challenge, however, is at home, not with its neighbors. The country must solve not just the temporary problem of creating a new government but the more lasting one of how to translate its political will...