From Boys to Men

Oh No! Oh My! Gets Serious about Silliness

originally published August 20, 2008

As the cliché goes: boys will be boys. The youthful candor, the "anything that can happen" aesthetic and the inevitable silliness that comes with the Y chromosome are all on display in Oh No! Oh My!’s music. The carefree dance lyrics and sing-song melodies about “riding bikes into the sea” seem to recall those endless summer days of yore, before work and the real world got in the way.

But to judge Oh No! Oh My! as merely a comedy act simply because of the band’s lighthearted nature is selling the artists short. In fact, on the upcoming EP Between the Devil and the Sea, the band starts the laborious task of dialing back the silly and upping the ante on creating better songs.

“I don’t think [the new EP] is more serious, but I do think we are taking it more seriously. It’s not that we weren’t taking it seriously [before], it’s that we are taking it more seriously now,” says multi-instrumentalist Tim Regan.

Oh No! Oh My!’s newfound focus isn’t quite the startling stylistic shift that happens when bands decide to make a career out of performing, but rather a honing of the group's collective abilities. One listen to the first available track from Between the Devil and the Sea (“The Party Punch”) shows a band crafting some of the most bouncy indie pop this side of Elephant 6. According to Regan, this is the sound of Oh No! Oh My! hitting its stride, and the boys aren’t content following a songwriting formula.

“We’ve been [a band] for a while, and we’re getting used to how everybody works together, and now we want to take everything to the next level. All of the stuff that we’ve put out so far was quality, and now we’re just trying to make sure that we’re progressing instead of staying in the same place,” says Regan.

That progression is paramount in the development of Oh No! Oh My! No longer can it only be the band with the silly song titles. Instead, it has to be the band with silly song titles and good songs to back them up. It’s a subtle progression, but a progression, indeed.

“Now we have a conscious motive to take things seriously; we want to evolve,” says Regan. That evolution began to take hold in 2007 when Oh No! Oh My! hit the road for much of the year. It also gave the group a chance to apply its newfound focus to the new material. What the band learned was invaluable, streamlining its live performances and cutting down on instrument switching between songs (this sounds like a minor detail, but every member of the band shares multi-instrumentalist duties). What Oh No! Oh My! has become since its tour is a well oiled machine - both onstage and off.

“This is the first time we’ve all gotten together and had a chance to play the songs on the road for a year so that we could see what these songs could do,” says Regan.

That time spent slugging it out on the road has lead to the recording of Between the Devil and the Sea. Regan hopes the EP can build on the buzz of Oh No! Oh My!’s previous album, but with a few welcome changes sonically.

“Now we have more time to make these songs huge. Before we were working on a four-track with three microphones - and now we are in the studio - and it gives us an opportunity to make the songs sound better,” says Regan.

But with extra time on their collective hands, a new creative focus and more than three microphones, is Oh No! Oh My! worried about losing its quirky homemade charm and becoming just another band?

Regan doesn't seem concerned. “It doesn’t benefit us to worry about that."

Jason Bugg

WHO: Royal Bangs, Antenna Shoes, Oh No! Oh My!
WHERE: 40 Watt Club
WHEN: Tuesday August 26
HOW MUCH: $5 (21+), $7 (18+)