Connect with us

We Speak Music

OK GO surprise fans with bright, synth splashed ‘Take Me with You’ and new ballad ‘This Is How It Ends’

Published

on

GRAMMY-Award-winning rock band OK Go have surprised fans with the release of two additional tracks off their forthcoming fifth studio album And the Adjacent Possible. Stream the bright, synth-splashed “Take Me with You” HERE, and watch a psychedelic official visualizer by David McLeod  HERE. Listen to the pensive ballad “This Is How It Ends” HERE. And the Adjacent Possible will arrive on April 11. The 12-track collection is available to pre-order and pre-save now HERE.

OK Go set the stage for And the Adjacent Possible with the January release of the album’s lead single “A Stone Only Rolls Downhill” alongside a stunning official music video. Adding to the band’s vast catalog of ground-breaking music videos – they’ve danced on treadmills and with dogs; in time-lapse and slow motion; in zero-gravity,  Rube Goldberg machines, and Super Bowl commercials – the clip for “A Stone Only Rolls Downhill” features 64 videos on 64 phones laid out as a moving mosaic. The band did more than a thousand takes over the course of eight days, and the final video crams over two hours and twenty minutes of single-take clips into one frame. Watch it HERE.

The music video for “A Stone Only Rolls Downhill” premiered on The Kelly Clarkson Show, and arrived to widespread critical acclaim. Consequenceproclaimed, “Come for the song, stay for the wildly ambitious music video,” while Fast Companylauded,“OK Go has reintroduced itself as a creative force with a new video that’s a whimsical riff on modern digital life.” Apple CEO, Tim Cook tweeted, “OK Go knows how to make an incredible music video!” and Shots declared, “Whenever a new OK Go video drops, the creative community’s mixture of anticipation and professional jealousy is palpable.” The New York Timespraised, OK Go’s latest single — from what will be its first album since 2014 — arrives, as usual, with an ingenious, playful, effort-packed video clip: a kaleidoscopic mosaic of intricately coordinated cellphone videos, directed by the band’s lead singer, Damian Kulash. Yet the audio can stand on its own.”

Last month, OK Go formally announced And the Adjacent Possible. Alongside the announcement, the quartet unveiled two new tracks off the album, and — in a first for the band —  released animated lyric videos by celebrated designers.  Listen to “A Good, Good Day at Last,” which features guest vocals from Ben Harper, Shalyah Fearing, and BEGINNERS, HERE, and watch TRÜF Creative’s surreal animation for it HERE. Listen to “Going HomeHERE and watch Karan Singh’s meditative lyric video for it HERE.

OK Go’s last record, Hungry Ghosts, saw the band tour for over five years around the world and release five of their eye-popping, mind-bending videos. Because of outside projects (Kulash co-directed his first feature film The Beanie Bubble for Apple TV+), life changes (kids!), a global pandemic, and even a TED Talk, And the Adjacent Possiblewill arrive as OK Go’s first studio album in over a decade. Reflecting on nearly 30 years of collaboration, while continuing to look forward, the band has emerged with its most diverse and accomplished collection of songs to date.

Continue Reading
Advertisement

We Speak Music

Acclaimed US singer-songwriter Juliet Lloyd to tour the UK for the first time this summer.

Published

on

Shortly after releasing her sophomore album in 2007, US-based singer-songwriter Juliet Lloyd walked away from music completely for more than 10 years, feeling burned out and unhappy with her career progression like so many other independent artists. After going through a divorce in 2019 and in the midst of a global pandemic, she found herself pulled back toward the siren call of songwriting and again making the leap to pursue it full time. Her latest album ‘Carnival’, released in 2024, is in many ways the culmination of those decisions, and the reintroduction of an artist who now has the wisdom of experience.

There’s an unmistakable urgency you can feel when a song is written and performed from a place of complete honesty. That feeling permeates ‘Carnival’. “I’ve always been envious of writers who say they write songs because they have to, because they had these things they just had to get out of themselves,” Juliet says. “I had never really felt that way until this album. I’ve become someone who writes because they have to.”

Stylistically, ‘Carnival’ draws on a range of influences from Laurel Canyon-era singer/songwriters, to Lilith Fair rockers, to confessional country/folk balladeers, to indie pop. The central theme of the record and that of its title track is not being too precious about any one experience or decision. Take them for what they are, live in the moment, and move on when they’re done. It acknowledges also that memory can be subjective, and ambiguous—was an experience ultimately a good thing or a bad thing? And whose memory can you rely on to determine the answer to that question?

‘Carnival’ doesn’t just deal with the complexities of ending relationships, it also deals with all the feelings that come with moving on. The album’snine songs feature evocative storytelling that reveals a simple truth: when the carnival inevitably leaves town, you’re left with an empty parking lot. And how you remember, it is a choice. As Juliet sings in the title track, “If only there was a way you could bottle up that feeling / and you’d drink it in / when the days are short and you long.”

Across her 20+ year career, Juliet has been admittedly stylistically non-monogamous. Her first full-length album, ‘All Dressed Up’, was released in 2005 and was heavily jazz-influenced- a label that she rejected at the time. “I am a piano player and a woman, so I was immediately compared to Norah Jones—and I bristled at that,” Juliet says. “Listening back now, I can totally see that it was true, and it of course wasn’t a bad thing.” Her follow-up release ‘Leave the Light On,’ came out two years later and featured a slick piano-pop production that led to five of its songs being placed on reality TV shows on MTV and VH1. Coming back after her 10-year break from writing and recording, Juliet released ‘High Road’, a collection of five Americana/soul-tinged songs produced by Jim Ebert (Meredith Brooks, Shai) that earned her widespread recognition and songwriting awards both in her home region of DC as well as nationally.

Now with her first ever UK tour scheduled for July 2025, Juliet has also dropped a completely brand-new single ‘Wild Again’, which like ‘Carnival’, was written with and produced by Todd Wright (Lucy Woodward, Butch Walker, Toby Lightman). ‘Wild Again’, however, charts yet another new step in Juliet’s journey.

Carnival’, is full of deeply personal songs that are drawn from my real-life experiences and relationships. Coming out of that album cycle, I was feeling a little exhausted by my own navel-gazing and I was craving inspiration elsewhere. So, a lot of the songs I’m writing now are an evolution of sorts – focused more on external stimuli and finding the personal stories and humanity in that. Wild Again is a perfect example of this,” she explains.

The idea for ‘Wild Again’ was born out of a NY Times podcast Juliet listened to about the real-life efforts to return the whale that played Willy in the iconic movie ‘Free Willy’ back into the wild.

“It’s an insane, heartbreaking story that asks all kinds of thorny questions about human responsibility and humility and what’s the “right” thing to do and is that the same as the “kind” thing to do. There was a line that one of the trainers said in the podcast, explaining that they were trying to “train him to be wild again.” The complete absurdity of that statement hit me in the moment, and I immediately started jotting down lyrical ideas”, Juliet says.

Catch Juliet Lloyd on her UK tour this July:

1st July: The Folklore Rooms / Brighton
2nd July: The Hyde Tavern / Winchester
3rd July: Hen and Chicken / Bristol (CRH Music promotions)
4th July: Artisan Tap Hartshill / Stoke-on-Trent

5th July: Waggon & Horses, Nottingham

6th July: Cafe#9 / Sheffield
7th July: Hyde Park Book Club / Leeds
10th July: FortyFive Vinyl Café / York
11th July: The Muddy Puddle / London
13th July: The Wrotham Arms / Broadstairs

Continue Reading

Trending