Review Summary: the epitome of contemporary rock while still sounding exactly like it's supposed to
Irony is a bated thing. Suffice to say that the Greeks knew what they were doing but as we skyrocket into the present all of their ideas wither from abuse or age or both. There’s a sense of bitter paradox in assessing the mode of delivery Oceansize went for. There is definite separation from their peers in this – their peers being bands still playing progressive rock with members not in their fifties – and it’ll leave a bad taste in elitist dorks I am sure. To culminate at a point, they sound like corporate rock and not in a good way, but they spin it as intelligently and bloated as possible.
There’s a sort of object message in this. I’m guessing it’s not one that was intentional and more of a wishful apparition of overthought. Nothing is more fun for the brain than overthought. What calms to action is a relative sense of getting lost. This isn’t exactly from the band’s name and image, though it contributes, or the nature of their complex and sprawling music, which would be too obvious. With all of the post-hardcore, post-grunge, and post-rock homages and melodies everywhere within a kind of standard sounding rock sound, but without the standard tropes, you keep a feeling of intense dislocation. Post-identity, if you will. It’s better than having midlife crisis. This feeling is even more fueled when taking the band’s direction head on: they’re streaming the 70s thirty years later without missing a beat. I can’t think of a more joyous celebration of the modernity of rock and what came before.
There is a kind of nostalgic pain involved, considering what no longer exists. It never creates any grievous wounds. Generally things phase out for a reason dictated by the changing of times. Effloresce comes bundled hard with this kind lost whimsy. Times have already changed and Oceansize writes to them without losing anything. It comes out all over the record, dealing with painful relationships and things that weren’t meant to be. Underlying the words is a matter-of-fact sense of things that do change and what happens because of them.
It’s all bittersweet, though you wouldn’t see it all at once. That’s what its power lies in, its major draw if anything. As subtle as change itself and it takes hold of you a minute at a time. Even if you feel like you got it down as it stands you realize that it wasn’t even standing for you or because of you or even in spite of you. And that futile example of analysis serves the same master as the one that lets understanding be within the gauge of current time, which are really the only things we should claim to know anything about.
