As
Owl City
, singer/songwriter
Adam Young
crafts uplifting and wholesome anthems that somehow straddle the line between synthy bubblegum pop and earnestly diaristic memoir. It's a distinctive niche he's been carving ever since breaking through with his 2009 hit "Fireflies" and one he returns to on his seventh album, the earnestly fizzy
Coco Moon
.
songs are super catchy, full of melodically homespun goodness (not to mention turns of phrase like "likety-split") that
Young
wraps in crisp dance rhythms, blue-sky synths, and smiling guitar strums. He's like the
Norman Rockwell
of indie pop, crafting feel good vignettes of everyday life. Some of his songs feel like they were born out of his own midwestern Christian upbringing, as on "Adam, Check Please" in which he sings about taking pride in his first job at a supermarket. Yet others feel more like fables or a tale by
Mark Twain
, as in "Field Notes," where a boy chases his dog over a ravine and discovers a trunk full of gold in a farm field. As soon as you start wondering if the gold is just gold or a metaphor for something deeper,
makes it clear. The boy, who has heretofore been living in a tiny, rundown shack, sells all his possessions and uses the gold to buy the farm field; choosing to value the rarity of the experience itself and the possibility for future magical/spiritual discoveries over the quick financial gain. In a message that can be boiled down to investing in yourself,
sings," Your heart's with your treasure, wherever it is/And trust me, when you dig, a treasure will be revealed." It's a refreshingly straight-forward vibe and one that exemplifies
's penchant for celebrating the little things in life, whether it's a surfer girl's quirky tattoos on "Learn to Surf" or the glint in a concrete Brontosaurus' eye on "Dinosaur Park." Of course, what he lacks in subtext, he makes up for in wordplay as on "Vitamin Sea," a sparkling ode to the restorative nature of Hawaiian beach vacations. With his boyishly upbeat vocals framed by crunchy power pop guitars and Caribbean marimba swells,
fully exploits the song's curative metaphor, singing "'Cause when my gusto gets low/Then that's when I know/I have a tropical deficiency." Full of puns, "Vitamin Sea" straddles an intentional line between sugary pop fun and sounding like a travel commercial. Of course,
seems to know all of that. A cynic might at first think he is being ironic or messing with the listener. But no, while there is clearly a cheeky humor at play throughout
,
, as with a lot of us, really just likes sand between his toes. ~ Matt Collar