Owl City — The Midsummer Station

Island | discogs.com

Unfailingly, delightfully twee pop confection.

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An insomniac teen in his parents’ basement, Adam Young began the Owl City project uploading the fruits of a sleepless night’s work to the internet. ‘Fruit’ is barely a misnomer. His albums are packed full of juicy, drippy, oversweet synthpop confectionery that is unfailingly and delightfully twee.

You’d be easily forgiven for mistaking Young for a shy, introverted ten-year old — his lyrics revolve around fantastical, dewey-eyed tales of anthropomorphic animals and puppy love. Food-related metaphors and cumbersome puns abound, so shallow that they’re almost profound. Supersaturated and syrupy though they may be, when stuck together with disarmingly delicate Postal-Service-as-preteens production, the effect is irresistibly charming.

There is something twinkly about The Midsummer Station common to all the Owl City albums. On paper they look irritatingly childish, but Young embraces this as his greatest strength. He lives in a world of his own, ensconced in a bubble of lucid dreams and kaleidoscopic colours. Utterly uninterested in the real world and all its faults, he creates his own.

Adam Young, age twenty-nine, is a man who never grew up. Our lives are all the richer for it.