The Kids are OK

In reminiscing about their Hamburg days, Paul McCartney once recalled to an interviewer that the Beatles used to hear shouts of "macht shau! macht shau!" ("give us a show!") from the drunken and cynical nightclubbers they played three two hour sets a night back to in the day, a call to do a little more than stand like rail-thin scousers and strum their Rickenbackers, and even if their career led them to places where the talent to make the same 60 songs entertaining onstage was ultimately shelved in favor of studio extravagance, they never really lost that sense of projecting charisma.

We're not ashamed to to admit that, as smitten as we've become with their videos recently, we had some reservations about what kind of a show OK Go was going to deliver at the Fox the other night. If video killed the radio star, broadband dances on his grave.

So, we were pleasantly surprised when the Chicago-founded quartet's first Fox appearence delivered onstage, and with barely a passing reference to their storied video artistry, a fun, solid and energetic set. Keenly tapping references from skinny-tie post-wave pop, techno-dance Prince channeling and indie-rock agita, OK Go bears its influences unapologetically twelve years down the road, having survived their early years dismissed by tastemakers like Pitchfork as lame Weezer-wannabes and maturing into sly popmeisters, balancing craft with spontenaiety, and showman's cheese with craftsman's beef.

We are more partial to thir later material - "This Too Shall Pass" and "White Knuckles" - but even their earlier material like "Invincible", "WTF" and "Here It Goes Again" (the latter sounding like an early Ocasek-Orr thing) came across with stout and confident resolve, with singer Damian Kulash up-front striking his best Doug Feiger poses, belting out post-slacker anthems of ennui and puny redemptions as if, holy smokes, he really means it. And yeah, they had a video feed running behind them, but no dogs and no Rubes and no treadmills, and after it was all said done, they could have delivered just as well without it. The confetti cannons and odd interludes (they did one piece, I didn't know it, straight a cappela, accompanied only by hand bells; a neat and deeply musical trick and an endearingly touching surprise) were unforced and well-timed.

For a band relatively unknown to the routinely insular Fox audience (the show didn't look sold out to me), they turned thier crowd into instant believers, and us too. My wife asked me what "indie rock" really meant as we were walking back to the car, and in the context of OK Go, I was more or less at a loss. Not on a major label? Not beholden to mainstream tastes? Who knows, because if these guys are the reigning poster children of indie-rock, they sure don't seem reluctant to become whatever indie is supposed to be a reaction to. They appear to be just hitting their stride and ready for their closeup, an ironic thing in a broadband world where careers are made and lost at download speeds.

Someone obviously keeep reminding them that just showing up isn't the point. It's "macht shau", isn't it?