Mando Diao – Ode To Ochrasy

To be completely honest, I didn’t know what to expect from Mando Diao when I first laid eyes upon their third release. I haven’t heard anything prior by them, but apparently they’re kind of a big deal across the pond. So after doing the research before getting the chance to pop it in for myself, I heard terms like “garage band” being tossed around. Now, while that may not necessarily be a terrible thing, I do recall the phrase “ugh” flashing, no, pulsating around my frontal lobes. Not because garage bands are terrible per say, however, unless you’re “New Bomb Turks”, they just don’t generally stick with me at all. Well I manned up, tossed in Ode To Ochrasy and prepared for the dull.

Thing is, the dull never happened.

This album cements the importance of not giving a shit about the press release. What I got was completely different from what I expected. It’s neither lo-fi nor minimalist. In fact, Ode to Ochrasy flourishes with multiple brass and percussion instruments making each sound as loud and bombastic as possible, as if each song was their last. Mixed with interludes featuring bi-lingual lyrics and dancey as hell tempos, Mando Diao are trying to outdo themselves with each song, which works for me.

Lyrically, the album is based around a small concept, similar to the latest album of fellow European musicians The Streets: the repercussion of fame resulting from their previous album. The coined term “Ochrasy” has been described as “the band’s self-invented name for the early hours after the show, the after show party and the strange nightly meetings with odd characters- but before the next day begins.” Topics are based around social alienation, religion, love, sex, drugs and rock and roll. The album opens up with “Welcome Home, Luc Robitalle” with it’s rollicking, angular guitar lines reminiscent of olderBloc Party or Franz Ferdinand (both of which are awesome and if you don’t agree, then you deserve vicious bootings) and doesn’t let up for a while. Near the ¾ mark it slows up with ballad-esque tunes such as “The New Boy“, however they’re still intricate and interesting in their own ways.

To be honest, I just can’t get over how huge these songs sound. Though the wave of Strokes clones are losing steam in the mainstream, Mando Diao are single-handedly reinventing the genre, making it exactly what it should be, fun.