Rock act OK Go spent nearly three years promoting its 2005 Capitol breakthrough, "Oh No." Now, "It's about time we moved on to something else," frontman Damian Kulash tells Billboard.com.
"Something else" for the band will be spending the next few months penning its next, as-yet-unnamed album. The aim is to completely finish writing the tunes before entering the studio this summer. The group has a "list of suspects" for producers, but is open to working again with Tore Johansson, who aided with "Oh No," in Sweden.
"We don't write very well on the road, which means we haven't written much at all," says Kulash. "It typically takes us 50 or 60 songs to narrow down to 12."
Still, after a decade together, the foursome has a know-thyself approach to songwriting. "After a while, we have all these ideas about what we should be making, song-wise. They're these reactions of what other people expect and what we feel like we're expected to sound like ... loud soul songs from four white boys. But trying hard to make every song sound like that turns into homework," Kulash says.
"With the last record, we sat down to write, thinking what we were good at was loud, energetic, smack-you-in-the-face rock songs," he continues. "But after it was done, we were most happy with the ones where the song wrote itself. My favorites are still the ones that weren't singles."
The band did get a chance to hear their songs re-recorded with a soul/funk band, however: as previously reported, OK Go collaborated with New Orleans mainstays Bonerama to record the benefit EP "You're Not Alone" last year. The set will be released Feb. 5 -- Mardi Gras -- and includes new versions of OK Go songs, plus covers of David Bowie's "Rock'N'Roll Suicide" and Bob Dylan's "I Shall Be Released."
The group hopes to schedule a short slew of tour dates in the new year, though "not a tour two-and-a-half years at a time," Kulash promises. The band will play with Bonerama at Tipitina's in New Orleans on Jan. 11 and has a trio of dates schedule for February, two of which are in South Africa.
"Something else" for the band will be spending the next few months penning its next, as-yet-unnamed album. The aim is to completely finish writing the tunes before entering the studio this summer. The group has a "list of suspects" for producers, but is open to working again with Tore Johansson, who aided with "Oh No," in Sweden.
"We don't write very well on the road, which means we haven't written much at all," says Kulash. "It typically takes us 50 or 60 songs to narrow down to 12."
Still, after a decade together, the foursome has a know-thyself approach to songwriting. "After a while, we have all these ideas about what we should be making, song-wise. They're these reactions of what other people expect and what we feel like we're expected to sound like ... loud soul songs from four white boys. But trying hard to make every song sound like that turns into homework," Kulash says.
"With the last record, we sat down to write, thinking what we were good at was loud, energetic, smack-you-in-the-face rock songs," he continues. "But after it was done, we were most happy with the ones where the song wrote itself. My favorites are still the ones that weren't singles."
The band did get a chance to hear their songs re-recorded with a soul/funk band, however: as previously reported, OK Go collaborated with New Orleans mainstays Bonerama to record the benefit EP "You're Not Alone" last year. The set will be released Feb. 5 -- Mardi Gras -- and includes new versions of OK Go songs, plus covers of David Bowie's "Rock'N'Roll Suicide" and Bob Dylan's "I Shall Be Released."
The group hopes to schedule a short slew of tour dates in the new year, though "not a tour two-and-a-half years at a time," Kulash promises. The band will play with Bonerama at Tipitina's in New Orleans on Jan. 11 and has a trio of dates schedule for February, two of which are in South Africa.
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