GoGo Penguin’s new album, Everything is Going to be OK, is so named, not because the band are in possession of an hopeful crystal ball which predicts an imminent end to the UK’s present social and economic problems or of Vladimir Putin’s genocidal invasion of Ukraine, but is a somewhat more humdrum statement about the easy listening neo-jazz trio and their future.
This reflects the Manchester band’s optimism now that they have a new drummer, a new record label and, apparently, a “more sonically liberated” sound. Quite why Chris Illingworth, Nick Blacka and Jon Scott have decided to celebrate this new era with an album of unchallenging background music that is best suited to soundtrack activities that don’t require paying much attention to anything else, like reading a book or falling asleep, is anyone’s guess though. Coming on like an over-relaxed Red Snapper or a stripped back Portico Quartet, Everything is Going to be OK is so chilled out as to be completely horizontal.
The pretentiously titled but brief (at just over two minutes long) “An Unbroken Thread of Awareness” is pleasantly atmospheric and cinematic in its scope, with shades of a South Asian vibe and a sparse piano, while “Parasite” is bubbly and, given its title, sunny and optimistic in tone. Tunes like “Saturnine”, “Glimmerings” and the title track, however, merely offer minimalist ambient and atmospheric vibes that aren’t very engaging to the point of being instantly forgettable. In fact, they encourage the mind to wander to an extent that these tunes shuffle by without making much of an impression at all. Indeed, it might be suggested that considerable editing might have produced a spaced out and gentle EP rather than such a bland album.
