aaamusic | On 28, Mar 2011

Oceanea is one of those EP’s that should probably have only been a released as a single. The titular track is okay if not particularly memorable – a potentially interesting mix of ambience, jazz and vague folk sits pretty comfortably alongside Dolby’s clean, inoffensive vocals, which would all be fine if the same formula were not repeated twice on the two accompanying tracks. Everything plonks along at the same pace, which is fine to begin with but really isn’t enough to justify three tracks – the addition of female vocals in the opening track is pretty much the only interesting attempt at mixing things up here. To be fair, Simone and To The Lifeboats are not just clones of Oceanea – they just aren’t particularly exciting in their own right. It’s not bad by any means, but the lack of variety gets old fast. If you’re still interested, you’re best off investigating the aforementioned opener as I doubt you’d miss the other two tracks.

Author: Katharine Sparks