Download it here Download it hereDownload it here Download it here Oak Island
Ghost Dream
[Self-Released: 2006]
[Rating: 6.7]
Eat assholes
Eat assholes
Eat assholes
Eat assholes
A debut album is a funny thing. With no real context, no expectations other than the words on a one-sheet or the musings of a few friends ("Dude, have you heard...?? He's like this blank blank from blank blank that plays blank blank."), the listener is often forced to create their own context, molding the backstory of a record until it fits their own notions of how the artist in question should behave.
Take, for example, the debut album by Toronto-based Oak Island (real name Jeff Zito). Apparently a solo project, the album bears the clear stigma of a singular vision never quite realized. Flipping through popular indie rock styles like a man watching TV in a half-rate Seinfeld joke, the album suffers from a serious lack of cohesion. Opening with plucked, harp-like guitar loops, the song rises gently for the first two minutes, bringing in some Sigur Ros meets Cher-circa-Believe vocals along the way. The sound begins to break up and the listener is forced to check to make sure the cd isn't skipping. This elicited an audible, "what the fuck?" from me upon first listen. The hisses and pops eventually die down, replaced by a surprisingly stirring distant rumble from a bass-y organ and settle into seemingly endless streams of repetitive, poorly-mixed harmonies before drifting off into a minute of reverberated guitar. The piece is certainly pretty but seems very slight. You've spent seven minutes listening to the indie rock T-Pain croon through a broken stereo.
The second track, "Subway+Elevated" fairs worse. Coupling leaden vocals with thinner-than-air synths, Zito waxes romantic over some kind of lost love via unfortunate bird/inscrutibale Islam referencing metaphors ("Anna Ukraine/Allat, you crane/Red hood and grace/Black crown on human face/Come north"). It's cloying in the worst way (and in serious need of an editor ((like a meta punchline taken too far (((like an artist reviewing their own album for a fake website ((((or a reviewer intensely in love with their parentheses)))The song piles on sound after sound to try to thrash its way towards a climax that never really comes. Things improve dramatically as its turgid rock gives way to an elegant vocal line over placid, heavily edited guitar and synth loops. "River Water," the fourth track is where the album begins to find its footing. Opening with a bizarre mix of Animal Collective-aping tribal yelping, abstracted resonant piano and a cannon-like bass drum, the song shifts into a calm groove, laying out blankets of guitar loops to rest the absurd-but-affecting vocals of what sounds like Joanna Newsom's ill-at-Ys cousin. This song aims for a similar climax as the second track and succeeds, letting the song drift off, with a heavily distorted organ setting the pastoral mood. You can almost feel the song breathing, calm after the storm.
Track five livens the mood up considerably. Ostensibly a poppy dance song, and completely out of place on the record, Oak Island almost raps over an abstracted, jagged reggaeton beat. The song's buoyant chorus belies the sinister political message underneath. Though he is almost buried under a mixture of howling synths and ringing bell tones, you can hear Zito state plainly, ("If God decides when it's our time to die/Then he hates black people"), walking the world's finest line between astonishing ignorance and profound insight. Where he lands depends largely on the religious and political leanings of the listener, but you certainly must give him credit for trying (Trying what exactly, who knows...).
Track six ("Air Ones") starts with a surprisingly spare, delayed bell organ and high-pitched vocals delivering more violent drug use/god talk ("You laced up/Your AirOnes/To get laced up/For Your AirOnes/...A diet of lead means/Hoppers stay hungry when/Their daddies/Blow stained glass/My father describes/A sickly orange glow/Our ascension to Heaven/Could not have come too soon"). The song is a departure from the heavily looped, claustrophobic sounds of the five songs prior, instead using piano, acoustic guitar and gentle horns to subtly lift the song's first third to a light finish. The vocals soon fade into a gorgeous wall of ambient noise, slowly building to another crescendo that never quite arrives. Instead the ambient guitar fades out and in comes far and away the most revelatory few moments on the album. The ambient wall from before is revisited but the bricks are crumbling. It's William Basinski on speed, quickly shredding the joyous blare of before into crackling, devastating bursts of static. The wall crumbles around the listener completely as what sound like a small army of horns herald the arrival of whatever was on the other side, then cuts out drastically, leaving the listener with a suddenly strange silence. It's like the horns at the end here are announcing the arrival of a new artist, one whose skewed attempts at pop music are scizophrenic and hit or miss but genuinely affecting when on target. The album may never reach the lofty goals set out for it but you can hear the vision and see the potential. Perhaps with future collaborations, Zito can learn to shape his ideas more effectively and rein in some of his cheesier tendencies. Regardless, now you can place this album in context, now you really know what to expect from the artist: pretty much anything.
-Beanbag Chair Chorizo, November 4, 2006
Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/oakisland