The latest full-length release from Okey Dokey, Tell All Your Friend, is either a brilliant marketing strategy or a north star heralding the end of the full album era. Maybe a bit of both. Back in late 2017, they band released “Hometown”, the first single from Tell All Your Friend and proceeded to spend the entirety of 2018 & half of 2019 slowly trickling out every single song from the new album as a standalone track. Each track has its own unique artwork, unified across one another with Aaron Martin’s fantastic illustrations. The full album was released in late July 2019 and serves as more of a compilation for those that have been paying attention than it does a grand event for the band. In fact, they hardly mentioned it on their social media.

There are two additional factors to this release tactic that should be noted. First, the band started releasing singles for the next album, Curio Cabinet I, before Tell All Your Friend (the album) ever even hit streaming services. Secondly, they didn’t take down any of the prior singles so a listener curious about Okey Dokey will see a massive amount of releases as opposed to just one or two. This results in a constant flow of new music from the band, which results in fan appeasement and fodder for their social media. From the outside, there’s no downtime for Okey Dokey, new music is always on the way and anyone new to them will find tons to listen to.

Is this tactic for everyone? Maybe not but it’s worth taking note of. It’s not an entirely new idea given that most music was singles based until the advent of longer playing formats but they’re leveraging it in a way that is massively effectively for our current digital world requirement of putting out Something New Everyday.

That’s a lot of waxing on about the band’s release strategy but not a lot of words about the album itself. In short, it’s fantastic. It’s entirely likely that this release technique required the band to shape their album in a way that every song really could enjoyed as a standalone piece. There’s no album filler, no downtime in the back half and no songs lacking in hooks. It’s unfair to give that credit to anything other than Okey Dokey themselves, a duo that has honed their breezy, head-in-the-clouds, pop to damn near perfection.

It’s an understatement but Spotify, Apple Music and all the other streaming services of their ilk have changed the landscape for musicians in a fundamental way. Garnering fans requires patience and connections with Playlisters to elevate your single track out of the masses. Releasing a record as a long series of singles certainly detracts from the celebration of a New Album being born into the world but Okey Dokey’s done it in a noteworthy way. Will this be the new normal or simply a singular tactic one could choose to take? It’s the Wild West out there and it certainly seems like the experiment is working.

Back on Episode 148 of the WOTT Music podcast, we featured the track “Plans to Save” from Adrienne Franke. The piece was taken from a Belcourt performance put on by the Hyasynth House that paired local electronic musicians with silent films; allowing them provide an original score to the pieces (see also: AIR’s Le voyage dans la lune or Coupler’s Dragnet Girl score). Franke’s particular pieces went along with Alice Guy Blaché’s Falling Leaves.

As the original film is roughly 12 minutes long, “Plans to Save” is only one movement in a larger suite of songs. Franke has announced that the entire performance will be available on August 23rd and can be pre-ordered now.

Not having been at the original performance, it’s difficult to speak to what the other three tracks will sound like but “Plans to Save” has been in regular rotation since its initial discovery, so it’s safe to assume the rest will be a continuing treat.

If you haven’t heard our WOTT Music episode with Z, do so now!

Take any singular track from Z‘s latest release, Trauma Center, and you may find yourself experiencing a chunky onslaught of riffs and snotty vocals mixed with effusive screaming, or you might find a sweet pop song with programmed drums, or maybe a sound collage of found sounds and rave style throbbing beats. Somehow, Z is able to weave together a massive sum of influences and styles into one cohesive unit that feels refreshingly diverse instead of alarmingly sporadic.

It’s worth noting that Expecting the Unexpected is normal when it comes to Z. Their Cassette Day EP MAGNUFEEK is a dark and foreboding trip into 90’s Club Kid sounds, while BarbedWire.org is largely full of bombastic, dance-y, indie rock songs. Trauma Center is an entirely different sound altogether but the fruits of their labors have never been traditionally consistent.

All told, Trauma Center is a much heavier experience than what we’ve heard before. Even with the dark songs of Magnufeek or BarbedWire‘s album closer “The Burner” we haven’t heard this level of intensity from the band previously. There’s been a few lineup changes since the original inception and they’ve been on the road pretty much continuously for the past year, so it’s impossible to know if this shift is due to the outfits natural growth or if it’s a direct nod to the fact that the album is called Trauma Center – in which an onslaught of sound would certainly be on theme. In reality, it’s probably a little bit of Column A and little bit of Column B.

All reflective history aside, the album taken as a whole is an immersive trip that should be taken in from start to finish as it feels broken up into movements. I’m not calling it a concept album but every three tracks seems to capture a different vibe; from an intense onslaught, to a descent into nightmare, to a lighter emergence from said darkness. It’s a reach but the tracklist certainly seems curated to oscillate between fevered intensity and a quick respite. The collection ends on a four track suite that seems to repeat and summarize the entirety of the experience through a wildly different choice in instrumentation, primarily consisting of samples and beats.

My fandom for the diversity of the band likely clouds my judgment on being able to comment on it in a more direct way. It’s a big riff rock record with plenty of screaming, broken up with somewhat poppier, comparatively gentler, rock songs. But the fact that there’s ten minutes of rave at the end makes it impossible for me to think of this as anything less than Completely Special.