Owl City – Coco Moon Review

Bookend your years with awful art. Owl City marking the start of 2023 with a Cast Away-inspired burst of electronica misery is not the way to ring in the bells of the new year. Wipe the slate clean then, do not let the fear linger any longer. Coco Moon, the latest miscreation and horror from one-man torture device Owl City, is as awkward and dated as expected for a creative still coasting on the not-so-good Fireflies and the oppressive optimism of their work. Not a problem solver but an ignorant avoidance for smoothed brains to feel good on their car rides to fast food dealers. Such is the life of the live, laugh, love variety – now the target audience for Owl City to turn upside down and shake out the spare change.  

Not a single tick in quality comes through Coco Moon. Every second of its fifty-five-minute endurance test is a miserable, soppy and irrelevant collection of every day, by the numbers living. Owl City talks of going over the edge of a ravine on Field Notes, and it is a sad shame this record was not destroyed in the process. No such luck. These eleven songs are, without question, the worst in the discography of Owl City. Empty pop attitudes and a flatlining voice which neither rises nor falls to the sickly strings and orchestral duds of student-level creative writing. Coco Moon has a children’s television show appeal to it – simplistic and for those who cannot process the world around them without the guidance of adventurous tracks. Not adventurous in the studio, but in the Dora the Explorer prose, the journey Owl City heads on is asinine and muted. 

Christian electropop numbers without any sentiment, novelty or unique jolt of energy within. Cliché is apparent on every bit of this release, the heart and soul noted as all which matters in the pursuit of gluttony and money is an ironic turn to make for a one-hit-wonder pulling in nearly tens of millions every month from streaming services. Music made by a man so desperately trying to position himself as a Disney soundtrack artist, or at least that is the state of play in this series of blunders. Music tailor-made to be rejected by the video game Terraria. Not a single second of creativity or real, truthful expression can be found on Coco Moon, and for those who do find it, would probably like a ball of tinfoil to play with too. Owl City falls down the same hole as Marvel, where binary opposites of good and bad play their back-and-forth, and an inevitable victory for the heart concludes each song or action. Give Sons of Thunder a listen – it is clear right there. 

Adam Young’s torture circus continues despite the career-ending work of their previous album, Cinematic. Banal and trite in all the usual circumstances bring about one of the worst listens of the year. What one artist can do in three minutes, Owl City cannot do in a near-hour of sluggish, twee songs which hope to dumb down life and the world around us into explainer ballads of contemptible quality. The Tornado marks an essential moment in understanding how Young operates. He recalls his childhood, which sounds as mundane as his music. Cycling through gardens and thinking of the weather. Arguably, Young has never experienced true joy or an experience through his own eyes. It certainly sounds as though he is a spare part of his own life on Coco Moon.