Omo – The White Album

Very occasionally, an album arrives which leaves us scratching our heads. An album which, in spite of repeated listens, does not open itself up or click into place. An album which you just don’t quite know what to make of. The White Album by Omo is such an album.

Omo are a two piece outfit consisting of Berit Immig and David Muth, They’ve been playing together for about five years, and this, their debut long player, is an assemblage of what they describe as “domestic pop for domestic occasions”. And it’s an unbelievably frustrating listen.

There’s absolutely no doubt that Omo possess unbounded creativity and flair. The White Album a lesson in exemplary electro textures. There is no shortage of ideas lurking among the exquisite concoction of beats and lo-fi instrumentation. Penultimate track ‘Turtle Neck’, for example, marries a looped guitar line to a pounding electronic pulse and the result, although hardly anything new, is still something vitaland invigorating. ‘König’ is an edgy, atmospheric piece of music which shows a creepier facet to the band’s sound.

Sadly though, Omo give with one hand and take away with the other. The most exasperating thing about The White Album is the handling of the ‘zany’ subject matter of the lyrics which ranges from underwater robots, to making a cuppa, to why birds couldn‘t fly if their eggs were too heavy. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with humour in music. If Neil Hannon can pull off a whole album about cricket, then why shouldn’t Omo be able to give us a song about tennis? The key is in the way the songs are delivered. There’s precious little warmth in Immig’s spoken word vocal delivery, which means the absurdity of the songs just sounds forced.

However, there are one or two instances where the Casio-pop aligns perfectly with the vocals, and, not surprisingly, these are among the album’s most successful moments. We see it on ‘Oversized’, where the mantra-like chant of “Will you be surprised when I’m oversized?” combines nicely with the hypnotic beat. It’s a shame that these moments of lucidity are few and far between, because underneath the wackiness is a brilliant album of painstakingly constructed bedroom electro desperate to make itself heard.