I Am the Ocean - ...And Your City Needs Swallowing

Seafaring dreams obviously both haunt and inspire I Am The Ocean, since the band is in fact hopelessly landlocked in its home base of Salt Lake City, UT. Maybe that's why, for all of this debut effort's cyclopean oceanic imagery and conceptual storyline, neither its music nor the accompanying words are in any way evocative of the deep blue sea. Instead, its first person, stream-of-consciousness narrative is only just cryptic enough to avoid being reduced to emo-style complaining, and comes draped with amusingly nonsensical titles such as "Chasing Bears and Reading Scriptures" and "Randy Wrinkled Travis," or worse, just plain stupid ones such as "Nobody Calls Me Chicken" and "Puked on and Slapped Up" -- what givesNULL Either the bandmembers are hopelessly confused within the labyrinthine layers of their own post-ironic irony, or they are indulging in a few too many in-jokes for most outsiders to relate with -- never a smart move if you're asking people to buy your records. Read More