Courtesy of Absolutely Kosher.

Okay is a collection of earworms that could only be creations of Marty Anderson‰’s questionably sane brain and tortured body. After turning minds inside out with Dilute‰’s cosmic blizzards that took spider web guitar melodies into a state of grandeur never since replicated, anything short of brilliant would be received as relative failure. Thankfully, Okay sounds entirely new and unmistakably Marty (APA would have him referred to as Anderson, but I think Marty‰’s more representative). Okay is stuffed with descriptive contradictions ‰ÛÒ adjectives like light-hearted, existentially depressed, joyous, simple, layered, and unnerving could all be taped to any given song. The thick gloom and comparatively heavenly light of Anderson‰’s life are all translated so seamlessly into his songs that Okay albums feel like an unabridged therapy session with the artist‰’s psyche.

First, some background: Marty is trapped in bed for 16 hours each day, intravenously fed a cocktail of morphine, Vicodin, and Valium to treat continuous and extreme spinal pain. In place of adventures in the outside world, he makes art ‰ÛÒ almost nonstop, explaining to the San Francisco Bay Guardian: “writing songs for me is like shitting.‰” There‰’s no one in the world that sings like Marty Anderson. He croaks and moans right on key in a voice that would make more sense coming from frog or a corpse than a human being. In my head, the best illustration of the emotionality behind it is The Elephant Man: initially, it‰’s disfigured and hideous, but after some time, the ear notices all the pent-up anguish and longing for love hell-bent on escaping.

Instrumentally, Okay flirts with the line between satisfaction and insanity. It reminds me of those old car commercials where pampered housewives and suited gentlemen wear enormous, lobotomized grins. There are plenty of playful tones in the music: whizzing kazoos, childish xylophones, barbiturate synthesizers, major chords, and simplistic percussion. However, Okay‰’s delivery makes them suited better for the children‰’s hospital wing than Disney theme songs.

Courtesy of Absolutely Kosher.

Manically prolific, painkiller-addled pop music sounds interesting enough, but what‰’s an artist without heartache? Long story short: Marty‰’s lover and bandmate, Anna, takes ecstasy with a mysterious Yosef, who writes a catchy song about the tryst. Marty tries to sever communication between the two, only to have Anna become engaged to Yosef. Marty‰’s reaction to the whole ordeal is to invite both into his new band, Okay. Work begins on twin albums, each a parallel world based Marty‰’s choices at this intersection of life: High Road and Low Road. 

Both albums are complete masterpieces in their own regard, and knowing the backstory and thematic perspective of each turns the two albums into a musical equivalent of Hitchcock‰’s Vertigo. The fictional work may as well be autobiographical ‰ÛÒ characters and thoughts and blame and fantasy find themselves meticulously painted into a singular universe. High Road is the path ultimately chosen: forgiveness and reconnection – a coming-to-terms with the warts of desire. Low Road is the vindictive fantasy of cutting transgressors out of your life, wallowing in accusations and the heartless void of life.

Each album has a sort of thesis song; High Road has a syrupy, sickly-sweet glob of warm synthesizers and clearheaded guitar in “Sing-Along.‰” Marty looks at existential discomforts in excruciating detail: who is telling me the truth, what‰’s right and wrong, what if my deepest convictions are just lies? These demons are able to be buried, written off as unalterable components of human life: “It‰’s all right to be black and to be blue / It‰’s all right to believe what isn‰’t true … Oh, I am gonna try to let go.‰”

Meanwhile, Low Road is an unapologetic, masochistic, emotional beating. “Oh‰” summarizes best ‰ÛÒ a melancholy acoustic guitar accompanies Marty‰’s sarcasm drenched “I got a full life, the good life / The way it‰’s supposed to be.‰” Later, organs enter with chords that could simultaneously soundtrack the world‰’s saddest funeral and your favorite cinematic tearjerker. Finally the catharsis arrives, whispered lyrics rip right into your ribcage: “Oh, it hurts / To be stabbed in the back … It‰’ll never be you, it‰’ll always be me.‰”

If given the time and space, I could probably write a novel about Okay‰’s body of work. While High Road and Low Road comprise a yin-yang emotional coup de grÌ¢ce, I haven‰’t even touched on the savant songs scattered throughout them. When you have a stockpile of 250 songs penned by Marty‰’s song-writing poise, there truly isn‰’t a moment wasted in Okay‰’s entire discography. This isn’t even getting into Huggable Dust‰’s equal beauty. There are repeated lyrical themes of being caught right between life and death; the paralyzing absurdity of knowing it‰’ll all come to an end and still having no clue what to do with the time. Marty runs the gamut of emotional daydreams, packaging it in an impeccably developed and uniquely expressive style.

Even his undeveloped, unreleased kernels of ideas are astounding and capture my imagination in a similar manner to Daniel Johnson‰’s music. Their bare, downplayed simplicity allows for only glimpses into their endless potential. The brilliance is evident, but open-ended so as to allow oceans of interpretation, an infinite allure in what could have been. My favorite is a synecdoche for their appeal: “Open Space” presents a canvas of infinite time and potential, dense with beauty just waiting to be found.

The mystery extends to Marty himself, who has disappeared from the public eye since 2008. I‰’ve spent hours pouring over the five albums left in his wake. On each listen, I notice tiny new details like old friends hidden in plain view that further enrich these albums. I stumbled upon Marty‰’s music at a pivotal 14 years old, in the midst of beginning to actively explore music, absolutely dumbfounded at how much better Radiohead was than Warped Tour headliners. I was initially just confused, but those perplexing sounds kept earbuds glued in my ears. 

Throughout high school, Marty‰’s music was almost an imaginary friend. I wondered whether I was nuts for being so smitten with this artist that my friends despised. Musical affections tend to fade or get replaced as tastes develop over time. Over the eight years since that (I grimace as I write this, but it honestly was life changing) musical “reawakening,‰” Okay has not only stuck around, but even become nearer and dearer. It feels like Marty resonates with something unexplainable, buried deep within my brain or subconscious or soul or what-have-you. Maybe this mystical part of me is merely another illusion for making sense of the world, but after all, it‰’s all right to believe what isn’t true.