OK Ikumi: Spirits

OK Ikumi (a.k.a. Utah’s Karl Jorgensen) is a band in the business of beeps and bleeps, electronic squiggles and crunchy bass synths. They pull together to form gentle, dancy little pop tunes, with lyrics as wistful as the record’s opening line would suggest (“Let’s all move the forest,” Jorgenson sings faintly, his vocals buried, as usual, in the mix). The result is a debut that’s slight and charming, polished and upbeat. The downside is that at 13 songs and nearly an hour in length, Spirits is way too long for what it is. By the time you’re five or six tracks in, you’re ready for a change. By the time the album comes to a close, seven or eight tracks later, you’ve probably already moved on to something else.