Blue Oxford - Closing On The State (Slacker Rock/Shoegaze/Hip-Hop???)

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BE WARNED! This album is... interesting... very interesting. Right off the bat it opens with "Meadow Garden," filled with random acoustic guitar plucks and piano keys, and a driving bassline, which turns out to not actually be a bass, but the low e string of an acoustic guitar. Over this the vocalist repeats "racecars, shoes" over and over again. It could mean something, but it probably means nothing. It would sound like total **** but it stays barely above the line between senseless noise and actual melody. Up next is a weird ass cover of "Blister In The Sun" by Violent Femmes, complete with distorted vocals, buzzy acoustic guitar, and some random banging on the piano. Sounds like ****.
After this is "Early one morning the sun was shining and he was lying in bed," which is the opening line from Bob Dylan's "Tangled Up In Blue." It sounds similar to meadow garden and I'll give it credit, it sounds like "just waking up," with its weird yawning vocals. Next is "Pullsups Chinsups Telfair Street (Fuzzy)," which has some actual songwriting, talking about some weird teenager stuff like trying to find a homecoming date, going to football games, and getting 5 hours of sleep. Instrumentation is similar to the other songs but this one is especially noisy, having an extremely fuzzy guitar absolutely swallow the track at the end. It's like a really ****ty Microphones track about teenage angst.
Next is "Fell In Love" a Slaughter Beach, Dog cover. It's mainly piano with the occasional weird noise. The vocalist actually does a somewhat decent job here, although the track is still pretty ****, suffering from being 3 minutes long. Next is "Loft 1 Formerly Loft 2" An extremely short song where the singer repeats "I'll always love you" twice over acoustic guitar strums. Not good, not bad, but very short. After this is "Loft 2," the fastest track yet, which includes a very skeletal drum machine mashed with a bunch of reversed and distorted guitar and who knows what, with the vocalist repeating "In the morning or in the nighttime, you came back alone with a flashlight," which turns out to be a car seat headrest lyric.
The album takes a huge left turn after this, going into an ultra distorted rap song "Pottery Shed," where the singer rambles about smoking weed over a headache-inducing beat. Pretty unexpected, I'll give him that. After that is "Old East Coast," which has a weird time signature, moderately noisy instrumentation, and some spoken word vocals, some reversed. Then we get "Pullsups Chinsups Telfair Street" which is literally just the (fuzzy) version but the fuzz at the end doesn't annhilate the track. The album returns to rap on the closing track, "Smokey Bear Is My Friend," which has some weird ass bars about doing drugs but also loving nature and Smokey Bear. Honestly it's kind of an enjoyable track.

Good things about this album: It's definitely unique. The songs are usually not very long, so if it sounds like **** (like it often does) it's more interesting than boring. It's almost like if Bill Callahan made Sewn to the Sky when he was a high schooler in 2024. (I'm assuming this guy is a high schooler, talking about **** like homecoming and hoping not to fail an AP test.) To summarize what this album sounds like, it's basically a combination of early Car Seat Headrest and early Smog with two hip-hop tracks mixed in.

Bad things about this album: It sounds like ****. Songwriting is minimal but when it is there it's pretty cringe. The covers are the worst part, absolutely butchering the original songs. Mixing is interesting but ****ty. Melody does not really exist, and when it does, it is a crappy attempt at it or just so weird it's bad. Vocals are pretty below-average, for the most part, but work well with the instrumentation, I guess. They don't really need to be that great to work with everything else going on in the songs.

Final Thoughts: I don't remember how I ran into this, and I'm not sure if I'm glad that I did or not. It's definitely very unique and interesting, and if it wasn't, I would've given it like a 2/10. I'm interested in what this guy is going to do next. If anyone is reading this, definitely check out at least some of the tracks. It's an interesting listen, for sure. It's only on bandcamp, but I'm not allowed to post the link because I don't have 15 posts, so just search "Closing On The State" as the album name if you want to find it. It's also a free download. Thanks for reading if you made it this far. (P.S., if you want the bandcamp link just message me and I can send it your way.)

Least Favorite Track: "Fell In Love"
Favorite Track: "Pullsups Chinsups Telfair Street"
Rating: 3.9/10