The press material for O! The Joy describes them as “ingenious” and their debut record as “impetuous.” Zen Mode, it announces, contains “a perfect harmony between a wide range of genres, from krautrock to emo.” Post-rock, math-rock, and prog-rock are also mentioned by name.
Dutifully enough, they’ve imported stuff from all of the genres claimed. From emo, we get sincerities shouted with emotion. From math-rock, we get long sections where they slash or pick through bits of angular slashy-pickiness. From post-rock, we get that towering haze of reverb that Interpol are constantly using to disguise dull passages. There isn’t a whole lot of krautrock, but the intention is well-taken; krautrock is one of those perennial muso favorites, and O! The Joy want to be a free-spirited, melodic synthesis of a lot of different muso favorites. A band with that as a goal won’t want to categorize themselves, so, after dithering over it, the promo writer settles on “experimental pop” to describe their sound.
Put more simply, Zen Mode is a prog-rock record. Drummer Justin Goings skitters away at that Jimmy Chamberlin thing he’s doing. His bandmates are up front for the entire record as well, and all of them compete noisily for your attention by playing notes at the same time. The arpeggio is the chief unit of structure for these guys, so what you get for most of Zen Mode is busy, arpeggiated fugues with sudden time changes. Drum fills overflow the slight songs they’re wedged into. Druggy Pink Floyd interludes drift between them, buoyed along by drifty keyboards and druggy guitars.
Unfortunately, the way it’s all executed, the prog winds up completely at odds with the emo. Instrumental showboating crowds out the vocals, leaving them too diffident and insular to be as confessional as emo is wont to. Since the vocals don’t sell the words and the words don’t back up the emoting, what was supposed to be melancholy just comes across all dour, which sucks all of the fun out the musical fireworks show. So, what you’re left with is not-fun prog-rock, and that’s no good at all.
Worse, O! The Joy continue to change shape and size constantly on every track, a decision that winds up underscoring the similarities between this stuff. Songs blur together; inspired parts (like the driving chords that open “Conceivable Test Tube Baby”) share equal time with dull ones (like the rest of “Conceivable Test Tube Baby”), and there’s no lucky, take-away song at all. Any claim to “experimental pop” is deflated because Zen Mode is not pop. As for experimentation, these aren’t tests, they’re inefficient designs – and that’s engineering, not science. Tighten them up and the whole thing might fly someday. It’s too bad Zen Mode doesn’t.
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