Great Good Fine OK: Great Good Five OK Review

Great, Good, Fine, OK have a history of preferring an EP to a full album. To date, they have four (and one remix EP) compared to two full albums. Great Good Five OK, their second album, is as frustrating a title as you can get while still being given a pass for being clever. I wish I could say the same for the album, because this is a group I've enjoyed in the past. I can't, though; this is one boring-ass album.

I'll get a few things out of the way to begin: 25% of the songs are decent toe-tappers, invoking the best of the dance-rock post Daft Punk Discovery genre. One additional song is colorful and cheerful. There are 8 songs, and that means the remaining length of the album is mercifully short. That remaining stuff, though, is still at worst annoying and at best as noticeable as an ant across your living room.

I'm not going to say this is a group that has been known for having deep lyrics. There's lots of great stuff that doesn't have depth in the lyrics. Anyone who says Around The World has made an emotional impact after it repeated the title 47 times is messing with you, but damn if it isn't an amazing motif. This album is not trying to be that, though. There's a clear intent of simplicity, and an unintended result of fairly immature musings. I will give them credit for not being as gross as rock can be about relationships; everything here is simply puppy love. I expect sbeve style memes to pop up from these lyrics.

I've given this album a few spins now, and I am not kidding when I say I struggle to remember even half of it. The leader, So Far So Good is a fairly competent number, incorporating an especially gurgly keyboard sting that I really like. The rest of the motif is pleasant and sonically spacious without being empty. When the album goes in this direction, it reminds me of the best of their previous work. There's proof in their discography of this competency in production and melody writing that just doesn't show up much in the rest of the album.

By 2020, the third song on the album, you'd be forgiven for flipping away from it before the other good song, Real, makes its way onto the stage. With nice slappy bass and a fun clipping of vocals leading into a Timberlake-esque harmony multi-tracking, you can see what GGFO are hoping will come of these songs. If it doesn't become a radio song, I really don't see any other song making the cut either. Mostly that's because this a collection of overly simplistic monotone melodies that lean on the most basic launchpad drum loops you've heard in millions of TikTok wannabe popstar songs. Except when it's trying to sound like Ed Sheeran for Progress, and I'm not sure which is worse.

It's frustrating to hear such ineptitude in the melodies because, again, I know they can do a better job than this. By this point in their career, they should know that the techniques utilized in 2020, Could Be Us, Progress, and You Don't Look at Me the Same are bandaids. I tire of stuffing 7 words into as short of the measure as possible, 6 of which use one note, then waiting a few beats to repeat. I also tire of finger snaps, staccato backing music, and overuse of autotune.

I'm even tired of talking about this shallow, immature, letdown of an album.



4.8/10

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