I always enjoy just googling random cd's and searching through the plethora of forum results that I get back. More often than not, another band will be mentioned in there, and I'll have enough incentive to check out that band. This is where Okay comes in, randomly searching through forums I found a link to this cd, and the picture accompanied with it got me intrigued with it enough to try it out.
Okay is:
Marty Anderson- guitar/vocals/other
it's hard to find info, but I'm sure many other artists contributed to this.
Marty Anderson doesn't have the best of a life. Being diagnosed with Crohn's disease (a severe case of it too), Marty is confined to his bedroom only, but still manages to make the best of his situation. While also doing many paintings (which can be found on his myspace page), this whole album was recorded in his bedroom, but there is no sounds of any sort of low production value on the whole album, sounding clean throughout.
Huggable Dust seems to float around the point of love, and what you feel when what you love disappears. The mood of the album itself is an oxymoron. While the music at most times is extremely upbeat and happy, the lyrics and vocals are melancholic and depressed, with stories of heartbreaking love and story of a long distance relationship.
This boy
He really wanted this girl
But he didn't have the time.
She said
I want into your world
But he said this world is mine.
If there is anything that will turn a person off from listening to this, it is Marty's voice. It's a hard thing to describe. It's very graty and just all in all, a hard voice to get into altogether. But as the album progresses, with every instrument, and every nook and cranny of the album comes to light, the voice becomes as beautiful as the music being portrayed. And in one second, you know that no other voice could substitute for the album, and no other voice could give the feeling or emotion that Marty's does.
Marty does a very good job of putting song structures together and including a wide variety of instruments to create varied music throughout and create some beautiful melodies and harmonies. Many things, from organs and bagpipes, to trumpets, flutes, harmonicas and clarinets can be found on here. Triangles and keyboards too. When the drumming comes in, it's very sparse and spaced from the music, giving songs a more disjointed feel, a feeling when you lose a thing you love.
I'm going to give this a shot here. Here we go.
The beginning of "Only" starts off a beautiful song. Starting with a woman repeating the above line through a phone, "Only" is a 1:30 song about a long-distance relationship. Everything in this song fits perfectly. From the woman talking over a phone through the whole episode to give the feeling of being together no matter where you're at, to the off-beat clapping adding warmth to the song.
Okay was a little treat for me. Deciding to listen to this off a whim showed me a beautiful, varied indie-folk album, a collection of love songs. Marty's "different" (seriously the best way I can describe his voice) voice creates an atmosphere all on it's own, and will be the hardest thing on this album to get past by. But after that, it's all one big giant folky treat.
I want you to know that you're my only
I want you to know you're my life
I want you to know you don't got to be lonely
I want you to know it's all right.
