The pressure and hopeful expectations placed upon Adam Young’s shoulders add up to no small weight. While the coy, shy and witty artist has delivered a generous portion of the kind of bright and infectious joy that pleasantly surprised a pop rock world with Ocean Eyes in ’09, these tunes carry a slightly more “serious” piano-rock (or dance pop) based sonic pallet. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but the electronic quirkiness was part of Owl City’s charm and it’s been partly smoothed over with production here. This collection of tunes comes closer to the “magic” of Ocean Eyes than last year’s All Things Bright and Beautiful, so maybe we could call this “cautious optimism” as opposed to crazy joy.
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