Artist: Okay
Album: Huggable Dust
Label: Absolutely Kosher Records
Year: 2008
Reviewed By: Woodstock Slim
Marty Anderson has been in a few projects I've heard but nothing like this. I'd like to think his creaky voice is not as a result of him suffering from Crohn's disease but it sounds great anyhow. He used to be in a band called "Dilute".
He manages to reach a place of peace, with a little melancholy and kind of disturbing sweetness that creeps through here and there, I believe is unplanned. I don't know how much pain he's in all the time I can only guess a hell of a lot and that gives his music a meditative quality. The sound is not overly melancholy. It haunts now and then but not all the time. I think I'll have to bump "Huggable Dust" to 2nd best album of the year. Maybe after a few listens... I might have to kick Firewater out of first place but it is still early and we'll see how strong I feel about it in a month or two's time.
I think it sounds a lot like Razz Ohara and His Odd Orchestra. The voice and a lot of the simple synth moves making it glow slight Electronica but not enough to make those awful Postal Service fans want to listen to it.
Tracks like "Panda" is filled with hope and one can't help thinking about his health all the time. Maybe soon we will know a bit more about him and update the info. Sitting, standing, and lounging amidst the jumble are the majority of the members of a band called Okay. They are: Ian Pelucci, bassist, prone to smiling, relaxed on the couch; Jay Pelucci, drummer and Ian's brother, who closes his eyes and wears no shoes while he plays; Yosef Lewis, guitarist, yoga practitioner, and the only bearded member of the group; Anna Weisman, who plays the autoharp, has big brown eyes, and is engaged to
be married to the aforementioned Lewis; Amanda Panda, percussionist, who does, in fact, have the cute, rounded features of a panda; and Anderson, Okay's chief songwriter, who sits behind his Juno-106 synthesizer and Wurlitzer piano wearing what I will come to understand is his trademark fluorescent orange beanie, as well as layers of flowing blue shirts, colored, fuzzy wristbands, black beads, thick white spectacles, and a pair of sky-blue hospital pants with "Kaiser Permanente" printed on them. "I want everyone to bring bells," Anderson says to the musicians, who are packing their instruments for what is to be Okay's second-ever show the following night. "That's why I handed out the special sock."
The bells in question are each member's set of Tibetan Tingshas, which, according to one Web site, "create sounds to calm the mind and induce deep relaxation." The Tingshas are played at the beginning of an Okay performance to establish what is most definitely and appropriately a
spiritual tone. The special sock is, as far as I can tell, not that special.
