Grade: D-
OK Go is the kind of one-hit wonder that could only be bred in the 21st century.
Sure, they’ve had some success by the numbers. All of their albums to this point have reached the Billboard 200, and each has charted higher than the last.
But it’s safe to say that, by this point, the Chicago-based power-pop band is most memorable not for any of their music but rather for pulling off some fancy treadmill tricks in one of the Web’s first viral music videos, 2005’s “Here It Goes Again.”
The band’s fourth full-length record, “Hungry Ghosts,” mostly serves as a reminder as to why OK Go hasn’t left much of a mark musically in its decade and a half of existence.
The songs here mostly play as a thin pastiche of 2000s power-pop and dance-rock.
The uninspired vocal melodies and shredding guitar solos of post-“Pinkerton” Weezer pop up, but without any of that band’s earnestness, while the funky grooves and punchy vocals of “I’m Not Through” and “I Won’t Let You Down” recall once-trendy Brit-rock acts like Franz Ferdinand about a decade too late.
Even the one song that achieves the catchiness it strives for, opener “Upside Down and Inside Out,” rehashes the now-nostalgic guitar-pop of “Here It Goes Again” and Eve 6’s similarly titled “Inside Out.”
For better or worse, though, OK Go isn’t quite a guitar rock band, and most of “Hungry Ghosts” focuses more on electronics than it does any instruments with strings.
In a way, that works in the album’s favor, as a whole album of cuts like “Upside Down and Inside Out” would surely be more grating than the final product.
Most of the time, though, the electronic-heavy tracks come across as a sort of punk goes New Order or as a bored, lazy LCD Soundsystem.
Songs such as “The One Moment” might work in a 30-second Target commercial, but a full album of such tunes is decidedly sluggish and ineffective.
This all begs the question of how OK Go’s output is so slim — four albums in 16 years — and how it took the band nearly five years to put together 42 minutes of largely generic, by-the-numbers pop-rock.
By the sound of “Hungry Ghosts,” it’s possible the outfit is content with reheating radio leftovers for fear of progressing too much, but a spectacular failure would be better than this dull slog.
“Hungry Ghosts” ends with the dreary acoustic number “Lullaby,” on which frontman Damian Kulash tells listeners to “go to sleep.”
But by that point, the command just isn’t necessary.
