You knew this already - you knew it even before
All Things Bright And Beautiful was announced. You know it because that's the name of the album, and you knew it because of the artwork, and you knew it because of the track list. But none of these things really describe why you knew that
All Things Bright And Beautiful would be absolutely and unequivocally atrocious.
There are two types of artists in the world - and this doesn't just count for music - those that are capable of surprising us, and those that aren't. To this end, it's almost impossible to write about
All Things Bright And Beautiful, because everything I could say about it is something you've already worked out. It's actually less about the title and the art and the song names; it's possible to fluke these things. I mean, glance down the running order for Owl City's sophomore release: 'January 28, 1986'? This could be a work of genius were it elsewhere. But it isn't; it's here.
And the reason those flukes exist is simple: Owl City, or Adam Young, to give him his 'real' name (though he'd probably deny that such a thing exists, or something) functions like a random bullshit generator where the range of possible outcomes spans the length and breadth of
all things bright and beautiful, or, in their explicit and shallow senses as exhibited here,
all things irritating and meaningless. This is not just lyrically, but musically; beeps and casio sounds dressed up as 'randomness' which are actually nothing of the sort, just carefully selected gimmicks. Off-the-wall? Off your rocker?
So
All Things Bright And Beautiful is empty, but not in the nihilism sense of the word. It's not
Kid A empty, as if it needed saying. But the problem with
All Things Bright And Beautiful isn't that it pales in comparison to
real music, it's that whilst listening, it's actually impossible to shake the feeling that this is more calculated, more manufactured, than the vast majority of radio music. Because it's designed to feel like it's bursting at the seams with ideas, but it's not. I remember back in school there were these maths puzzles with a diagram of a machine where two numbers went in, combined with a function, and you had to work out what came out the other side.
All Things Bright And Beautiful is just like that. You combine colour A with colour B, add a times sign or whatever the flavour of the month might happen to be, and see what
bright and beautiful thing comes out the other side, except it doesn't actually exist.
And colours don't even mean anything.
