Thanks to radio broadcaster Harold Camping and his failed predictions of the Biblical rapture, there was a solid three-week period where it seemed the apocalypse — whether by Mayan prophecy or the wrath of God — was laughed out of the public consciousness.
This week, Owl City releases its third album, All Things Bright and Beautiful. Suddenly, the signs are back and the end is nigh.
Let’s put it this way: Have you ever been punched in the face? Better yet, have you ever been listening to, say, Kanye West’s The College Dropout when suddenly someone flips on Radio Disney and then punches you in the face? That’s a bit what listening to the repetitive, tasteless and musically dead All Things Bright and Beautiful is like.
The band, which is the personal and mostly solo project of bushy-tailed Adam Young, reached what will hopefully be its peak popularity with the 2009 smash hit “Fireflies.” If listeners have heard that song, then they have also heard every song on All Things Bright and Beautiful as well as basically anything Young will probably ever make from this point forward.
This isn’t a good thing, however. As silly as it is, “Fireflies” does have a distinct style, and while it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, that track can’t really be faulted for its mannerisms, just as T-Pain can’t really be faulted for using Auto-Tune as his main gimmick.
That being said, hearing Young recreate “Fireflies” over and over again — under different names of course, such as “The Real World” or “Dreams Don’t Turn to Dust” — is just as infuriating as the torture of sitting through hours of music designed for toddlers.
All Things Bright and Beautifulis chock-full of the same boring synthesizers and whiney vocals that Owl City listeners have heard before, as this album makes no effort to step outside that box. Every single track on the record sounds identical to the one before, to the point of confusion and anger.
Things get worse with the addition of rapper Shawn Chrystopher on single “Alligator Sky,” which, besides the rapping, is indistinguishable from anything else on the LP. Honestly, the track’s closest living relative is probably the short rap verse on Rebecca Black’s “Friday” — and that’s not in the funny, pop-culture reference kind of way.
Putting aside the forgettable muzak that underscores Young’s irksome voice — with a timbre that chafes like a bad rash — the album deals in equally brain-dead lyrics.
For a guy whose music was borne of lonely experiments in his parents’ basement, the subject matter is decidedly non-sexual. Every song looks at worldly objects and transforms them into remedial metaphors for love without any kind of conflict or thought.
Creating such a nonstop torrent of vomit-inducing lyrics seems like a daunting feat, but hey, think about all the possibilities with tracks such as “The Yacht Club,” which is about various forms of sea life turning love into a difficult game for the narrator, or “Plant Life,” about various forms of forest life embellishing the narrator’s love pains.
“Kamikaze,” involves comets, horses, birds, flowerbeds and a princess, though not necessarily in that order or any coherent pattern at all. The track features shouting strewn over most of the composition and is perhaps the most annoying musical moment on record this year.
The cavity-inducing sour candy that is All Things Bright and Beautiful is a tough listen, and not in the way composer John Cage is a tough listen. The deeper listeners dig into the music, the more they will begin to hate themselves for wasting their time.
Granted, passing a song or two of Owl City’s on the information superhighway isn’t the worst thing that’s ever happened, and besides, there are a lot of babies who might get a kick out of putting the CD packages in their mouths (not recommended).
In closing, try to avoid it. There are plenty of other things in the world you could be doing with your time before judgment day.
As Young sings on “Honey and the Bee,” featuring the sickeningly Auto-Tuned Breanne Düren, “I swear/ there’s a lot of vegetables out there.”
You tell ‘em, Adam.
RATING: .5 stars out of 5
