Okay 'Huggable Dust' album

At first, Huggable Dust seems to be a break up record, but it is much much more. It grows and blossoms and touches on so many aspects of the heart: longing, loss, obsession, disagreement, and resilience. It is about wanting to hold onto things that slip away and coming to terms. The lyrics are intensely personal, but manage to remain ambiguous enough to be molded to almost anyone's experience. This album feels like you are reading a journal, the magic is it could be Marty’s or it could be yours.

The lyrics and vocals on Huggable Dust are plaintive and at times full of sadness. They are meditative and repetitive, a bit like mantras, deceptively simple. In the song “Natural” Marty repeats "I want you, I want you, I want you", over and over and then ends with "I want you to be happy". Is the entire song a lead up to the final sentence, wishing happiness, or is it telling the familiar story of intense passion that fades, and the realization that it is time to move on? How much time passes over the course of one song?

Counterbalancing the simplicity of the lyrics is the music. Multi layered and baroque, dense layers of technological and organic sounds fizzle under blissful pop melodies. The music almost implodes on itself, self destructing to make truly beautiful sound. Even in the simplest songs where Marty is playing acoustic guitar, it comes back to a boil. To use words like psychedelic to describe Okay’s music would be shortsighted. It’s much more intent and purposeful; it is psychedelic by outcome of process.

Huggable Dust, mixes the positive and negative aspects of the everyday, and the human heart. Both gripping and personal, it manages to escape genres. The album clings to the things in life that seem be so ephemeral and slip away when in reality they are just hidden. We all just need to look a little harder, and can be reminded by this album.

Due to a rare, chronic stomach disease Marty from Okay is unable to embark on a full US tour. However he will be playing a select number of West Coast dates. In addition to his music, Marty is a prolific fine artist. In support of Huggable Dust, Marty’s art and music will be going on tour to galleries and alternative art spaces across the country in 2008.

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Tracklisting

Okay - Huggable Dust