Owl City – “Ocean Eyes” Album Review

Published February 20th 2010 by
Filed under Reviews

Owl City’s sophomore album Ocean Eyes has been around for a while but it only really came to our attention over the last week. It seems to be unpopular to like Owl City despite Fireflies topping the UK singles chart in January.

It’s understandable that people could easily find the songs on Ocean Eyes quite annoying. The sound is very repetitive for twelve tracks (nineteen tracks on the deluxe edition). While it’s repetitive, it’s also coherent and the melodies on every track are really strong. So strong that they will get stuck in your head for hours after listening to any track on Ocean Eyes, which is probably the reason people find Owl City annoying.

Each track is watered down, electro-pop delivered with a somewhat comic, auto-tuned vocal. The lyrics are also quite funny and nearly every track has references to the “ocean” including track titles such as Umbrella Beach, The Saltwater Room, Tidal Wave and The Tip of The Iceberg.

One of the best tracks on the album is The Saltwater Room. The chorus probably contains the strongest melody on the album and either features a female vocalist or Adam Young (Owl City’s sole band member) increased the pitch of his own voice. Number one single Fireflies is also a highlight with another addictive chorus.

The good and bad thing about Ocean Eyes is, you can decide if you like the album after listening to one track. So whether you like Fireflies or not can determine your opinion of the album as the whole album has the same sound. This can be a good thing as the singles really showcase the sound of the album unlike other artists where it usually takes a few singles to showcase the sound of their albums. But it can also be a bad thing as anyone who doesn’t like the singles definitely won’t like the album.