Josh Ottum -‘Watch TV’ (Tapete Records)
The press release for this album speak of this being an album of contrasts. What it’s meant to convey is that Josh Ottum’s singer-songwriter approach mixed with his deliberately NOT guilty pleasure usage of using GarageBand for this record.
The thing is, that while he may not care whether people think it’s cool or not to use certain artificial sounds, I have no problem with it (though the guitar effect on ‘Fool In The Night’ is way over the top)…apart from it leaving the record sounding not very good. The songs are pleasant enough, certainly inoffensive, but nothing to write home about.
The sad thing is that Ottum has obviously worked hard on this album overseveral years, and it’s clearly important to him to investigate with the sounds that he finds exciting. Fair enough. There’s nothing really wrong with this record, but it’s not the exciting journey it would like to think it is.
**1/2
Watch TV is released on Tapete Records on July 11.