When Owl City’s Adam Young released his debut record in 2009, he didn’t know he had a hit on his hands — he honed his songs in his parents basement in Owatonna, MN, during his off hours working at a Coca-Cola factory — but Ocean Eyes went on to become the sleeper smash of the year, topping the iTunes Albums Download chart in its first few weeks and moving more than one million copies to date.
On May 17, Young will return with his second album, All Things Bright and Beautiful, and the 24-year-old has cut a more ambitious collection of songs this time around. Young teamed up with top engineer and producer Jack Joseph Puig (Green Day, Beck) and broadened his sleek, laptop-pop sound by adding fuzzed-out guitars and club-ready synths and beats. Still, tracks like “The Honey and the Bee” hew closely to the charming, lovey-dovey vibe that helped rocket “Fireflies” to the top of Billboard’s Hot 100. “I wanted to move forward, play around with ideas, and just do something more mysterious or unexpected,” he says. “You can only sing about love so much before you start to get annoyed with it.”
Things are looking up for Young, too: He recently moved out of his parents’ house into his own place a few blocks away, where he built a new studio to record much of the album. “My house is like a studio that happens to have a kitchen and five bedrooms added on to it,” he says. And he’ll head out for a huge tour this spring, which kicks off June 13 at Nashville’s famed Ryman Auditorium. (Check out complete dates.)
SPIN caught up with Young at home and asked him to break down a few of the album’s key tracks…
Read the full article here: http://www.spin.com/articles/owl-citys-adam-young-new-album-track-track
Owl City’s new album All Things Bright and Beautiful is set for a May 17th release on Universal Republic which will quickly be followed up with a headlining world tour. For the most up-to-date information, please visit www.owlcitymusic.com.
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