OK Cool – Chit Chat | Album Review
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Take A Hike Records
I’m the kind of music fan that does a lot of wishcasting, but I feel like I rarely see my wishes come true. For example, every year I claim that we’re going to get new music from Paul Westerberg, and every year I’m wrong. Whenever there’s a mystery slot at a festival, I say that it’s going to be a Jets to Brazil reunion, and every time it’s somebody else. Things just don’t ever pan out how I hope. Well, that is until now. I’m happy to report that I finally got one. I finally got my wish.
Before we go on, I need to give you a little backstory. In 2021, I started going to local emo shows here in Chicago, and I came across this band, OK Cool. Off the bat, I really liked them, a fondness largely indebted to their track “Five Finger Exploding Heart Technique,” which stuck with me more than any other song I’d come across in my early days of exploring the scene. In the years since, OK Cool have put out a handful of singles and EPs, and though I’ve enjoyed all of these releases, one thing I will say is that the band haven’t really strayed too far from their established brand of wobbly off-kilter emo. On the one hand, I get it—if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it—but on the other hand, something in the band’s recent live shows has had me wondering if they might excel with a slightly different approach.
This thought came to me after seeing the band’s cover of “Say It Ain’t So,” which has become a setlist staple as of late. While the song’s intro and verses don’t actually stray too far from their usual lane, the chorus, more forceful and power chord driven, showed me a side of OK Cool I hadn’t previously realized I wanted to see. It got me wondering, what if OK Cool made music that sounded more like that? A little more forward momentum, a little more oomph? It became something that I craved. And now, with their debut record Chit Chat, we have it. It’s exactly the record I’d been hoping for, and it’s a total level up.
Perhaps the best example of what I’m talking about is the album’s lead single, the tough to accurately type “Waawooweewaa.” It’s a song that wastes no time, shooting forward from the jump with more energy and drive than we’re used to seeing from the band. There’s a ton of confidence in their approach, and the song rocks as a result. One thing I particularly like about this big start is that it allows for contrast down the line. There’s a moment about halfway through the track where things fall away, leaving us with a spacier section that’s more typical of OK Cool’s sound; though we’ve heard the band like this many times before, it feels fresher here, the contrast putting things into a new context. As things pick up again and Bridget Stiebris sings “I wish I could say fuck it, and walk out into the lake,” we get some real edge in the vocals, further elevating things in a way that’s super satisfying.
Though its pace is less frenetic, “Jeans (I Get It Now)” is another song where Chit Chat’s tight, forward-moving songwriting really comes through. What particularly sticks out to me is the Bully-esque backing vocal accents that punctuate the line “I feel the same” whenever it comes around, an addition that’s small on paper but does a lot for the song. Also of note is the midpoint guitar interplay, which is maybe my favorite instrumental section on the whole record.
While “Waawooweewaa” and “Jeans (I Get It Now)” showed me a side OK Cool I’d been hoping to see, mid-record track “Loop” stood out with an approach that took me totally by surprise. Built on a base of piano, soft toms, and acoustic guitar, “Loop” finds the band painting from a totally new sonic palette. The understated approach to instrumentation on the track leaves room for a super compelling vocal melody, and I was left more impressed than ever by Stiebris’ voice; I would love to hear more stuff like this from the band in the future.
All of these effective touches are illustrative of OK Cool’s maturity; though I don’t think there’s ultimately a right or wrong way to approach the timing of one’s first record, Chit Chat shows the benefit that comes from a band living with themselves for a while before making the jump to an LP. This isn’t a band that finally has enough songs to meet some sort of arbitrary length requirement; this is a band that knows both what they want to do and how to execute it, and the whole record feels complete as a result.
Beyond this track-by-track fidelity, Chit Chat benefits as a whole from some great choices in sequencing. The last two songs, “Fading Out Forever” and “Last,” work particularly well in conjunction, helping to close the record out strong. In some ways, “Fading Out Forever” actually reminds me of “Say It Ain’t So” — in particular, the contrasting character of verse and chorus — and it features my favorite OK Cool hook to date. In the last twenty seconds or so, the song winds down in a way that’s completely unexpected, acting as a perfect off-ramp to the closer. The way that the opening guitar and vocal pairing of “Last” hits post-“Fading Out Forever” is just perfect, and the song is 100% made stronger by its placement.
As the final note of “Last” rang out and I reflected on Chit Chat, I immediately wanted to go back in and listen to it again. Like I said before, it’s a total level up; more focused and more realized. It’s exactly the record that I had hoped OK Cool would make. As a listener, you need to accept that artists won’t always evolve the way that you want them to; you can’t lose sleep over every change in direction that doesn’t fit your taste. Ultimately, how a band progresses is not about the listener; it’s about the band. With this said, sometimes the stars align and a band grows exactly the way you, as a fan, had hoped they would, and when that happens, you just have to bask in it. There’s nothing better. That’s what's happening here with me and Chit Chat, and it’s a record I’m so happy we have.
Josh Ejnes is a writer and musician living in Chicago. He has a blog about cassette tapes called Tape Study that you can find here, and he also makes music under the name Cutaway Car.
