Written Before Listen
Oliver Tree…what can I say about Oliver Tree? As an Internet personality, I always thought his image was hilarious but now, it’s gotten stale. His music on the other hand, not so big on. I thought his nasal voice was annoying and extremely forced and his whole schtick to his music is that it's a modern take on 90s music but songs like “Life Goes On” and “Out Of Ordinary” are terrible songs, with that being said, I hope this new album changes my mind.
Genre-Bending
So this is supposed to be Oliver Tree’s country album….this is pretty far from country. This is closer to indie-folk with influences from the 90s and 00s alternative/contemporary music. With Oliver Tree’s love and devotion to the 90s, there are multiple pop-country artists Oliver Tree could’ve taken influence from. There is Shania Twain, Dixie Chicks, Garth Brooks, Faith Hill, Billy Ray Cyrus, Tim McGraw, and many more. I’m not saying all of those artists are good, but Oliver Tree does have a wide array of country musicians from the 90s he could’ve taken from.
Influences
Speaking of influences, he does take some influences. The vocal inflections all over this remind me of the vocalist from Blink 182. The genre bends on this also reminds me of the corniest and most scattered ideas from the most recent Twenty One Pilots album. The song “Cigarettes” is like something out of the worst era of the Offspring and the riff from “Playing With Fire” is straight out of Nirvana. Overall, he might not take influence from country, but he seems to take influence from anything else under the sun of 1993.
Aesthetic
I guess I will say that I do respect parts of Oliver Tree’s aesthetic. The idea of The bowl cut kid with oversized jeans, a scooter, and comically small glasses gets replaced with cowboy apparel, a Lemmy style goatee and a mullet (that so also happens to have a bowl cut) is comical. On the other hand, this review is not reviewing a person, it’s about reviewing the album. Surely context matters but I will remind everyone that these album reviews aren’t criticizing musicians, every musician on this page gets a 10/10, I’m criticizing the music itself. Surely context matters but at the end of the day, if the context has nothing to do with the album itself, why put it into perspective when listening to the album itself? Exactly.
Now my least favorite part of the album is probably the way that Oliver Tree sings. He has this nasal voice that is really hard to listen to. Yeah sure there are a lot of nasally vocal styles that I enjoy a lot like Ozzy Osbourne, Jeff Magnum, Danny Brown, and Isaac Brock, but the exception with them is rather the music behind it or the expression/tone they are trying to portray. Someone like Jeff Magnum is way more nasally than Oliver Tree but his over-the-top expression and relentless emotion is what makes it. With Oliver Tree, he just sounds whiny.
Favorite Tracks
I honestly didn’t find a track I enjoyed on this album. I just didn’t find this album enjoyable. I can’t give any track its flowers. I can’t even give credit for the ambition of Oliver Tree doing a country album because if you ask me, This is about as country as Mac DeMarco.
Verdict
Yeah, I’m not returning to this album anytime soon. I guess there are some things I will give this album like the rollout, uniqueness, and sometimes the songwriting, but on the other hand, this album is an unintentional joke.