Review Summary: Definitely a new sound for Oceana. Save for the vocals, this isn't too bad of a listen.
While first listening to Clean Head you will probably decide that there was an error in your mediafire file and you ended up downloading some hipster indie rock comparable to Hell or High Water. Well, think again...this is the new Oceana, but probably not for long if they keep deciding that they are tired of playing this genre too. Clean Head is a complete 180 from BirthEater, and for the people who thought BirthEater was a complete 180 from The Tide...it's more like a 30. So take those words seriously, and don't go judging Clean Head with old Oceana in mind...consider this EP its own entity and give it a fair shot.
So what exactly has changed? Well, first of all there is no screaming whatsoever. Secondly what used to be the classic Oceana tone of basically always heavy distortion has turned into basically always clean tone or light distortion. But not only the tone/timbre has changed, but also the songwriting. In that sense, Oceana is better than ever. They are experimenting with new chords and creative but not incomprehensible rhythms. They do fall into a rut of the songs sounding the same, and they need to work on transcending more moods throughout, but you can't really expect that from a four song EP. Blue and Joy have essentially the same intro rhythm, just different chords which tells me they wanted to make it seem like they put a lot of thought into these "creative" rhythmic patterns, but ended up getting lazy or not paying close enough attention.
The drums are just as good as they have ever been in Oceana, and the guitar tone is pretty awesome, although they should have experimented with different textures. Even before this short piece of music ends you get tired of the wannabe As Cities Burn guitar tone. The singing is the one thing that is not up to par on this record, which surprises me because I liked Brennan's vocals a lot in BirthEater. It's not that he is out of key or anything, but his voice is just plain annoying. You can barely understand any of his lyrics, which I usually have a bit of trouble with...but this guy is not screaming, and he is singing slowly. You would think that he could enunciate a little bit better, and take some pride in his lyrics. In the beginning of Barracuda, Capital of the World he ends up sounding plain stupid. His voice always quivers too, which bugs me.
This album will be a good listen if you like new-school ACB or other rhythmic indie rock, but if you are looking for good ol' hardcore Oceana you will be disappointed.
