Rating:
Genre:
Rock
Release Date: 10/07/2008
The success of his song for
Enchanted painted
Jon McLaughlin as a Midwestern
James Blunt, a simpering soul who wants nothing more than to bare his soul. To be sure,
McLaughlin does a lot of that on his second album -- and first since
Enchanted --
OK Now (it almost seems as if he forgot the "What" in the title), often scrubbing those tunes so they can slip undetected into anonymous AAA airwaves. Where
McLaughlin has strength is when he loosens up and gets into big, bright pop, the kind that ruled the airwaves in the mid-'80s, after new wave synthesized productions and before adult contemporary flattened them. This is certainly due in part to the presence of
John Fields, the same producer who's given the
Jonas Brothers a lively sheen not too dissimilar to what's heard on
OK Now. When
McLaughlin kicks into this gear -- when he sings
"Dance Your Life Away," a carefree anthem worthy of
Footloose, when he crafts an
ELO tribute in
"You Can Never Go Back," or when he reworks the piano riff of
"Feelin' Alright" on
"Why I'm Talking to You" --
OK Now is unapologetic mainstream pop that's not heard too much at the tail-end of the 2000s: hooky, oversized colorful tunes that drill into the subconscious almost immediately. All this makes
McLaughlin's taste for the mawkish -- which surfaces not just on those ballads, but on his plea to featherweight freshmen to just hold on through the
"Four Years" of high school -- a bit of a buzzkill, bringing the album down to earth when it should soar. Of course, this is often a problem with mainstream pop albums, but at least the rest of
OK Now illustrates that
Jon McLaughlin has a greater gift for a big, bright hook than most of his pop singer/songwriter peers.
~Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
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