Archive for the ‘Owl City’ Category

It would be completely unfair to say that I was expecting more from this album, because I’d not heard much of Owl City before listening to Ocean Eyes, except for their hit single from earlier this year, “Fireflies.” Keeping that track in mind, I expected a really fun album. What I got was kind of a mess.

Owl City is just a band name for Adam Young from Minnesota. He’s a 1-man synthpop/electronic band, and at moments on this record, it shows. I suppose there’s an easy way to describe the album, which is schizophrenic. It can’t decide whether it’s synthpop, electronic, acoustic, rock, or just plain ol’ pop. And at the same time, the album seems to be broken up into 2 sections, fast and slow.

I’m a big believer in song-placement making or breaking a record. In this case, the album starts out pretty fast and poppy, and then veers off into this section of nothing but mid-tempo ballads. And the whole time, you’re left wondering, “Who is this guy, and what is he trying to say?” In my opinion, it’s good when you have a band that does ballads with the occasional upbeat track, or vice-versa. In this case, it’s split way too much down the middle.

Not to say there aren’t good songs on the record. “Fireflies,” “Dental Care” (the happiest song ever about going to the dentist), “Hello Seattle,” and “Vanilla Twilight” are a few that come to mind. But this album goes away from the “album” concept and starts to sound like a collection of singles. And, wuite frankly, while a drum-kit works on the more electronic sounding songs, I’d have preferred to hear a regular drum-set during some of the more organic sounds.

And going back to the song-placement concept, why would you put a remix of an earlier track (“Hello Seattle,” which actually would work quite well in a club setting) before ending with a new song? Breaks it up in a way it shouldn’t, when the rest of the album isn’t broken up in a way it should. As it’s got an issue of being too 50-50, and trying to play all sides of a multi-sided coin, I don’t feel comfortable reviewing it any differently.

2.5 out of 5 stars.

~Mark Massi