Owl City – Kelly Time Review

Returning after an absence of four years, Owl City offers up Kelly Time as their grand resurgence. That is not a bad way to announce a return, not at all. Very light electronic pop that feels both twee and twangy. Those notes are fine enough until it opens up into the lyrics, which are muted, dull and horrible. Lovely things like ice skating, twee and upbeat but not in a manner that redeems itself as anything but ancient and sickly. It would appear that four years of absence was not enough. Has nothing been learned after the horrors of Cinematic all those years ago? Vague autotuning on a voice as broad and light as Adam Young’s is confusing.

So too is Owl City, a very broad and bright track that feels the stagnation of its five-and-a-half-minute running time. Kelly Time has some awful lyrics to it, not just because of their presentation and what they hope to chart but how they link to one another. Line to line with such lightness, a sugary mess of at-first delectable notes. “Tragedy and pain,” one pocket of Kelly Time influence ring out. Tragic and painful are surely on the agenda of Owl City with this return release. If this is the welcome return of Owl City, then the hopes of permanent, nocturnal slumber are to be prayed upon. Alleged references to Cast Away and the perspective are irrelevant when the track is this bad.

Beautiful things are rattled off and they are embarrassing due to their specifics. Had they been broader then at least audiences would have no idea what Young and the collective Owl City have a real love for. Wonderful it may be to be alive; it is not so wonderful when listening to Kelly Time. Tropical and lush sensibilities are ruined by an opening note that sounds similar to some distant memory best held in the confines of that summery-themed tropical map on Mario Party 4. A specific note to make, but broadly understood by those that have engaged with it. Something about Tennessee and humpback whales being in the same line of lyric is both comical and utterly defunct. Young has let his imagination flow, questioning “what makes me upbeat,” and has presented a conscious, nutcase stream of lyrics to mark his return.

Not every track must be inherently tied to the trying throes of life, but Kelly Time feels completely misplaced in both is optimism and representation. It is feeble in its agenda and even worse in its examples of positivity. Even Pharell Williams wasn’t this obvious when he wrote Happy. Sunshine and rain contrast with a tambourine to boot, a slight twinge of autotune and some distant strokes of tin drum stylings. A shame, since Young does have a decent voice buried under all that post-production editing that swears off any semblance of potential quality that could have struck Owl City. Still, with lyrics like this, very little is possible. Hauntingly poor. It appears the MySpace beginnings of Owl City are still present, Kelly Time would feel best suited to that site in its current iteration, so nobody would have to listen to this.