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entertaining u newspaper: your weekly guide to entertainment
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Defending The Caveman
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by amy moore
So, I’ll admit it. I’m a bit of a music elitist. But not in the way you might think—I don’t look for the flawless performance. I love the imperfect. I look for the places where emotion overpowers restraint, where boundless exuberance expands the boundaries of good taste. To me, those places are the most telling of an artist—they provide entry to the outsider, allowing the listener to connect with the spirit of the performance. Those bits can be the most heartbreaking, or the most charming. This is not to say that I love poorly executed pieces of music; my only proposition here is that along with skill, taste, and refinement, an artist most endears him or herself to an audience by revealing something of their struggle in producing a piece of work.
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This brings me to Carey Ott’s new album, Lucid Dream. The album, released by Dualtone, a label known for releasing classic pieces of Americana, features a wealth of the skill, taste, and energy necessary to any great American album. The production is clean and features an excellent mix of rousing pop guitars and piano, solid, yet subdued drums, classic bass lines, and tasteful insertions of harmonica and organ. Ott’s voice itself is well suited for singing pop music, with a polished, clear tone much like that of Rufus Wainwright or Coldplay’s Chris Martin. Ott seems to be at his best with infectious, upbeat songs, such as ‘I Wouldn’t Do That to You,’ featured on the ABC television show Kyle XY, and the enthusiastic, Beatles-y, ‘Shelf Life.’ Both songs are composed of melodies and rhythms reminiscent of the Beatles, mixed with slightly digital-sounding guitar and organ effects that echo the indie popster band, Granddaddy. In other songs, a slightly more acoustic, folky aesthetic takes over, resulting in a pleasant melancholy akin to alt country bands like Uncle Tupelo or Wilco.
On a whole, the album is a fairly cohesive blend of classic pop with a light country tinge—perfectly pleasant to listen to and sing along with. Which brings me back to the beginning of this little discussion. The only issue I take with this album is the fact that it never quite grabs me viscerally. The key to this lack of emotional impact seems best summed up in the disparity between Ott’s words and his music. In his song ‘I Wouldn’t Do That to You,’ Ott intones “I sing because I have to.” Meanwhile, the music is boisterous, happy, and lighthearted—undermining the effectiveness of such a powerful statement. I never quite believe the pain implied by Ott’s lyrics, because he doesn’t seem willing to compromise the perfect pleasant-ness of his instrumentation. This is not necessarily a bad thing for music listeners, just for the ones who, like me, look for the artist to be the epitome of emotional potency, someone who can somehow musically represent the raw emotion we ourselves have a hard time expressing. If an artist is a sort of dreamer, full of unfiltered emotion and subconscious desires, Ott is, as the title of his album suggests, a “lucid” dreamer. He never quite surrenders himself to the sometimes dangerous power of the uncontrollable, choosing instead to craft a meticulous collection of songs that hint at emotional depth, but never quite delve deep enough to be convincing.
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