As a long time OK Go fan, numerous were the hours that I sat with baited breath on the bands’ website waiting for UK tour dates to be announced. Finally, in late August of last year, my perseverance paid off: the London date at KOKO was announced and I had tickets within the hour. So it’s fair to say I went in with rather high expectations which, luckily, were more than met.
KOKO is a beautiful spot: an ex-theatre restored as a concert-venue-cum-nightclub that has the highest honour of being Prince’s favourite venue in London. The support band was Oscar and the Wolf, a Belgian alt-pop outfit whose heavy, guitar-driven and somewhat grumbly songs were just about enough to keep the crowd entertained while we waited for the headline: the piece de resistance, the mouthwatering main course to our musical meal – OK Go.
The band entered to rapturous applause and immediately belted out the new album’s opening song, “Upside Down & Inside Out”. In this moment, the band are into it; all three levels of the crowd are into it – hell, even the security guards patrolling the stage can’t help but have a little jig. It’s a delightful, powerful opener to what turns out to be a truly fantastic concert. When the song ends, the band introduce themselves (not that they need to) and go on to spend the next 2 hours playing through the greatest hits of their previous three albums, interspersed with some Class A crowd banter to break it all up.
Specific highlights included crowd-pleaser You’re So Damn Hot, dance anthem Turn Up The Radio, an acoustic rendition of Last Leaf and my personal favourite; This Too Shall Pass.
But, as with all good things, it eventually came to an end. The 10pm curfew hit and the band bid farewell after closing with Here It Goes Again, the song that made them famous all those years ago. I, along with the 3000-odd other people who attended, left the venue reveling in the musical mastery that we had just been a party to, wishing that I could jump back in time and relive it all again.
You can pick up OK Go’s new album here and check our their insane music videos here
The setlist was as follows:
Main Set
Upside Down & Inside Out
You’re So Damn Hot
The Writing’s On the Wall
I Won’t Let You Down
I Want You So Bad I Can’t Breathe
Obsession
This Too Shall Pass
There’s a Fire
Last Leaf
Get Over It
I’m Not Through
Needing/Getting
Do What You Want
Skyscrapers
Turn Up the Radio
Fake It
Encore
White Knuckles
The One Moment
Here It Goes Again
~ Joel Silver