Let's get this out of the way-- I read Pitchfork every now and then and if I'm on the fence on an album, i will give their review a read. Sometimes the reviews are useful, sometimes they're just sucking on the teet of absolutely terribly hipster shit-pie sometimes they get that shit-pie and they cover it in music nerd rage and they throw it at people because they are either not good enough or not indie enough or they "sold out"--which, is just a useless term these days. When TV shows have Music Directors who troll new releases and ad agencies gather up rights to songs (See Cadillac and Phoenix's 1901 for a recent example) I stop caring about the "cred" of the band or the reviewer. Ultimately, music is about one question: IS IT GOOD?
How you define "good" can be personal and it can evolve and change over time--my definition certainly has--but if you decimate an album or artist before you even hear a note, then piss off. You're no longer interested in the music; you're interested in making A Point.
Yawn.
Owl City, aka Adam Young, is a solo project that does sound an awful lot like someone in their late teens or early twenties sat in their room late at night listening to the Postal Service's A++ album Give Up and said, huh... ya know, i bet i could make something that sounds like that. And then maybe they sat down and did that because they were insomniacs and it was pretty good and it got the attention of some other people who also liked Give Up (did i mention it was a ridiculously well selling album and is probably 80% of the reason Death Cab For Cuties is on a major label?). And then, wow, it's like, right after that this insomniac kid got some money from those people at a label and he got some people around him who were also musicians and then they put their music into a recording software and the label released and it sold. For money. Which is weird because, oh wait, that is what happened.
How anyone can fault the kid for hearing some musician and wanting to sound like them is beyond me. How many kids listened to House of the Holy and went, Fuck yeah, I'm gonna play rock'n'roll! Did anyone listen to The White Album and go, I'm gonna make some fucked up awesome music too! Did that happen? I can't remember. It's hard to hear through all the blues-rock and every indie "Beatle's Break-off Band" darling E6-style shit-bomb band that cropped up because of those two albums. My apologies to the "purists"--apparently the synth-pop mine is closed to all but the initiated, for lo, the hallowed grounds are not fit for mere mortals to tread upon.
Gimme a break.
I started off talking about Pitchfork because they gave this album a 0.0 rating and railed against it like they album broke into their home and pooped in the shrine dedicated to the Vivian Girls relentlessly-mediocre-yet-lauded debut. Their reasoning? Owl's City's Ocean Eyes sounds like music from The Man. It's what they WANT you to like, brah. They turned that guy from Dntel, ya know, whatever his name is cuz i don't listen to his D+ solo stuff, into commercial "beats". And the vocals? They're all faux-Gibbard. They're Fauggard. There's even a male/female duet in there. Fuckin trash, man. You wanna go put some weed on my dad's amex?
Eat me.
Yes it's major label. The album isn't amazing, but it is quite good and very listenable. It does have high and low notes. If you liked Give Up, it is worth the 5 bucks on Amazon.
Good songs are Meteor Shower and On The Wings. Fireflies works for me too, but less so. There's a whole range of kind of second tier songs that are okay and just over the hump of not making me reach for my iphone to change the song when they come up, but if I'm already clicking through songs, I'll click through them as well. The Cave In and Hello Seattle are prime examples.
And I'm fine with that--look, the kid is young, he hasn't been a musician for terribly long and the fact that he made an album that has three or four really solid tracks on it should be lauded not harangued. It is a superbly rare and gifted artist who is any good before 25. That he turned insomnia into music--and presumably some money--is a good thing.
Unless you're a douche. In which case, who cares what you think anyway?
Album: Ocean Eyes
Artist: Owl City Rating: 6.5
Best Tracks: Meteor Shower, On the Wings
Listen if you like: Synthpop, Panic at the Disco, Postal Service, Dntel
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