Back in early May of this year I went to my local Salvation Army to drop off a bunch of stuff that was cluttering my basement and garage. This particular Sals’ is not one of those “great find” thrift stores; I rarely find anything even remotely cool there. They have piles of old pre-recorded video tapes, hundreds of vinyl records that nobody wants and tons of Harlequin romance novels. This day I stumbled across a stack of what looked like brand new CDs. A $1.99 isn’t always cheap when the music isn’t good, so I always try to take my time to review them. Most of things I discovered had 2005 dates on them but an album by Carey Ott called Lucid Dream stood out. It was only five months into the year and there was a 2006 release sitting in a dirty CD bin. Recognizing Dualtone Records, the label it was on, the album looked somewhat promising so I bought that along with three other potential good finds.
After the first few notes of the lead off track, “Am I Just One,” I was immediately happy with my two dollar purchase and thought this guy is going to be big if he’s not already. I didn’t realize the song had been featured twice on ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy (not that I watch it anyway) but from doing some internet searches his name barely came up. I did find that he is originally from from Chicago and played in a local band called Torben Floor for a couple years, before taking his act solo and moving to Nashville.
The songs stream together with common themes of sleeping, dreaming, daylight and darkness. There is a sweet haziness that suggests the entire collection and not just the title track is about lucidity. Ott creates simple well thought-out crafty pop which recalls a sensibility of current solo acts such as Josh Rouse and Rufus Wainwright as well as a slight British-pop sound. His heavenly guitar chords which connect “Kicking Stones” have the ability to transport you into a child’s nursery while still maintaining a melancholy feeling that, like the title of the album suggests, seems like a dream-like state. The dream is not a constant one as the slumber is suddenly awakened by his bouncy vocals. From the lulling “Hard To Change” to the elevating “You Got Love” to the chorus of “I Wouldn’t Do That To You,” these are all great tunes which will work well for this summer’s soundtrack.
Right now eMusic (along with Dualtone) has a contest to promote the album and they’re giving away an acoustic guitar; I think you have to download the album and then you’re automatically entered. The album on eMusic contains two bonus tracks not on the CD and right now they’re still free, so that’s cool. “January” is just a little too dreamy than the album but “To Get Lost” is an uplifting, twangy alt-country song that is helluva lot of fun. The album’s official release is August 8th, but don’t look for this in a thrift store because you’re not gonna find it there like I did.
These guys draw from the same influences as the Elephant Six bands, especially The Beach Boys, as well as from the collective itself. They play sunny, mildly psychedelic pop steeped in harmonies and kitchen sink instrumentation. Apparently they split up as a band when some members moved from their Memphis home base. In a neat twist they agreed to share the Snowglobe moniker and record albums “directed” by individual members with some amount of long distance collaboration. This is the first effort of that name sharing experiment and was spearheaded by Brad Postlethwaite.