After listening to a few tracks on Nothing Collapses, and continually fast forwarding and rewinding, it became abundantly clear that this is a mostly instrumental album. There’s little on this album in the way of lyrics or words or anything remotely resembling sounds that usually emit from human mouths. I know for a fact that there are singing parts on “Boy Detective” and after that the existence of further singing remains in a gray area. The press sheet that came with the album clearly denotes a vocalist of some sort, but I gave up searching for further vocal parts after about twenty minutes. This album is roughly sixty minutes, with nine tracks; do the math. That’s an average of six minutes a song…I don’t have that kind of time.
Now, don’t get me wrong, the instrumentation on this album is excellent and in some cases phenomenal. But for me music, no matter how well played or beautiful, is sorely lacking without a steady lyrical accompaniment. Drums, guitar and bass may be the engine that drives the song, but words are the tool in which a connection with the listener is made; a conduit that links minds within a singular idea or situation. Any good show I’ve ever attended featured the audience singing back the words to a band and sharing an experience together. I can only imagine that at an Oceans show, the crowd just does a lot of swaying with brief periods of air guitar and/or drums.
My cohort Paddy brought up the valid point that an instrumental album is great background noise when you’re deep in thought or writing; and I’d have to agree. If you need some possibly mind expanding noise playing in your subconscious while writing, doing homework or cleaning the kitchen, then Nothing Collapses is the album for you. If you, like me, enjoy and require the symbiosis between chords and vocals, you’ll probably need to look elsewhere. Maybe if I would’ve stuck it out and delved deeper into this album, I would’ve came away with a lot more insight into what Oceans is trying to do. Maybe there are some hidden lyrics and ideas that were just waiting around the corner before I skipped each track, but I tired of waiting for something to happen. I get a lot of albums in on a regular basis, and if you hope to grab my attention, you have to do it fast.
The Oceans music machine, for what it’s worth, is a finely tuned contraption that churns out emotive and beautiful sounds; I just simply require more words to latch on to. Looking back, this album probably would’ve fared better in the hands of someone a little more open minded, but it landed in this reviewers lap and I had to give Nothing Collapses the most honest and fair write up that I could muster. Opinions are like assholes…and this is just this asshole’s opinion.
