When my photo assignment for OK Go's gig at The Bellwether last Friday was confirmed, the instructions were out of the ordinary: "Free for all."
In general, sets at a venue of this size fall under the "first three songs in the photo pit" category. Well, this time there was no photo pit. Fans of the pop-rock icons were pressed up against the stage, vying for the attention of lead singer and guitarist Damian Kulash as he led the band through classics across the band's catalog. They opened with incandescently joyous "This Too Shall Pass" and closed the main set with their bona fide classic, "Here It Goes Again."
In between, the crowd was treated to favorites from the new album, And The Adjacent Possible, like the bombastic "Love" and the heavy groover, "A Good, Good Day at Last." Beyond the series of upbeat bangers that comprised most of their 90 minutes, it was only natural that Kulash and the rest of the band got quite creative (I mean, these are the guys who filmed a video where they played a song by attaching rods to a car that hit pianos as they drove past).
At several points throughout the show, Kulash asked if the audience had any questions. The first one was along the lines of "Do you know anything from Les Mis?" Moments later, Kulash and his bassist/friend of over 30 years, Tim Nordwind, broke into "The Confrontation," with Kulash playing the villainous Javert and Nordwind playing our hero Jean Valjean. I thought for sure the audience member was planted because how could they have pulled that out of nowhere? But then I see on the setlist.fm listing, they did the same thing in 2017. Their fans knew who they were watching.
Later on, when it was time to revisit one of their most popular songs, "Shooting the Moon," they wheeled out a table full of different bells and metallic percussion instruments; enough for all four members. They swapped the acoustic strums and massive guitar break of the original recording with cosmic dings and dongs, creating a moment of serene calm between all the high-energy tunes. Then everything became that much calmer and more personal when Kulash brought a stool into the middle of the crowd and sang the deep soul of "This Is How It Ends" with nothing but an acoustic guitar and a spotlight.
The various performance formats and locations throughout the evening made grabbing pics a fun, creative experience. Especially since half the songs were punctuated by blasts of confetti. Most bands would probably save the confetti for the end. But not OK Go. They were piling it on from beginning to end, launching plumes of brightly colored paper into the air that matched the polychromatic lights emanating behind them on stage.
The photo instructions may have been "free for all," but the ethos of their 21-song set was "fun for all."
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