OCEANSIZE “Home and Minor”, 2009
(Superball)
When I was a kid my parents subscribed to National Geographic and the magazine would sometimes come with a flexi-disc with animal sounds intended to give the listener a fuller experience of articles about humpback whales. UK band Oceansize have stripped their sound down by solely going for a quiet showgazer sound. Opener Album opener “Legal Teens” is bland Radiohead/Coldplay fodder. “Monodrones” is an ambient drumless piece with tranquil whirling guitar sound that pulls a listener into the pool so that they find themselves giddy from recurring circles. Fooling the unwary, the beginning of the title track is difficult to tell from its predecessor as it just blurs together until eventually after snail pace instrumentation drums come in. The band sound like they’re more than a little familiar with The Red House Painters with slow quiet building guitar and half-whispered male and female backing vocals.
A couple of tracks on this album are unnecessarily long and just bore. The album won’t melt any faces off but would be the perfect for a coffee shop owner looking for unobtrusive inoffensive mellow background music.
2.5/5
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