OO OO WA BEAT KITCHEN, JUNE 25
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The six members of the band, who hail from Dayton and wear suits instead of the requisite Flipper T-shirts or flannel, would be the first to admit that they sometimes fail at bringing to life their idea of well-crafted, melodic guitar music. Their first album, 1993’s Screen Kiss, contained a little too much self-consciously cheesy synth froth for its own good. Lyrics like “When we take off in our rocketship / Will you kiss me once again?” are pretty hard to justify to any listener, even one not of the indie persuasion. And the suits–the same well-tailored dark threads they wear to each and every gig and in all their press photos–probably haven’t helped. The conceit has gotten them noticed, but so far critics have dismissed them as neo-New Romantics and ABC-wannabes. And what praise Screen Kiss has received has been lukewarm. “The band doesn’t rock. It probably won’t be remembered decades from now. It is pleasant, however, and won’t offend anyone,” Tony Davis of Insider magazine opined backhandedly. But while the suits, the image, and some of their songs are jokes, Oo Oo Wa are not a joke band. And they do, in fact, rock.
On covers like this one, and fierce takes on another Bowie song, “Cracked Actor,” and Suede’s slashing, swirling “My Insatiable One,” the tight, syncopated groove of the band became evident. No shambling guitar playing, no drums out of time, no instruments casually out of tune. Just intense, well-executed guitar pop that shook you right down to your toes. Some of their own songs fulfilled the potential displayed in their crackling covers. The title song of their recent EP, Train Robber, which, like Screen Kiss, was put out by Chicago’s Limited Potential Records, brought to mind a rockier version of the Pet Shop Boys’ “West End Girls,” and “The Kiss Off,” a smooth, piano-tinged melody that recalls the clean pop sensibility of Aztec Camera’s Knife, came across as the best song they’ve written yet. In case the suits fool you into thinking that they’re just nice boys from Ohio, the lyrics to “The Kiss Off” tell another story: “So this is the kiss off, let’s just not talk for awhile /Your disappointment gives me strength, it’s when you’re sad that I smile.” The rest of their live repertoire does bring to mind a cornucopia of 70s and 80s influences, from the Jam to OMD to ABC, but as they’ve grown as a band they’ve developed a raffish, rockier style that, er, suits them much better than their early, archly overdone material.
