Picture a room. The room is filled with furniture. From afar the room looks perfectly designed with not a piece missing or out of place. Then you walk closer. Upon further inspection, you realize the beautiful couch you had your eye on is as old as the thrift store it came from. And that end table that looked so vintage? Brand new, right out of the box from Ikea. The lamp looks like your Norwegian Grandmother's but the coffee table is pure Italian marble from the hippest boutique. On paper, this is an interior designer's nightmare, but in real life it seems to work perfectly. How is this possible? Josh Ottum (sounds ‘Like The Season’) is wondering the exact same thing. After making music in his bedroom for 4 years, this Seattle kid had the bright idea to make his debut album a sort of "personal greatest hits". Th
e result? ‘Like The Season’, a twelve song/month journey into the hallways, bedrooms, dining rooms and garages of popular music. Bolstered by semi-hollow body guitars, old keyboards, dry drums, and a hundred multi-tracked voices singing melodies, melodies, harmonies, melodies and backwards woah-woahs and yeah-yeahs, Ottum's exquisite pop songs shine like polished furniture through a window on a crisp fall morning.
Joining Ottum on his solo debut are Sufjan Stevens' drummers and multi-instrumentalists James McAlister and Casey Foubert. The engineering was masterfully done in Seattle and San Diego by Jon Ervie (Modest Mouse, The Presidents of the USA), Casey Foubert (Pedro The Lion, Sufjan Stevens) and Josh himself. Protected by an army of 5 drummers and a patriotically soulful horn section, ‘Like The Season’ harkens back to the sweet melodic days of 70's pop, i.e., Stevie Wonder and Steely Dan, Randy Newman. ‘Like The Season’. also keeps a foot firmly rooted in traditional classical composition techniques a la Bach (the attentive listener can find reworked melodies and lyrics, i.e., theme and variation, throughout the record). There is also the not-so-apparent influence of such modern bands as The Flaming Lips, Grandaddy and Phoenix. But don't be mistaken, this is not a record of cheap rip-offs and retro throwbacks. These disparate elements have been critically examined and intricately assembled by Ottum to fit perfectly into a fully functional and aesthetically pleasing musical living room.
With a two and a half year road to completion, Josh Ottum is more than ready to release ‘Like The Season’ to roam free throughout the western world like a college student traveling Europe upon graduation. Songs from the record have already been featured on MTV's The Real World and Road Rules and tour plans are in place for Europe and the U.S. throughout 2006/2007 season. Ottum is a virtuoso without being a wanker, a classic pop songwriter without being boring, and a pretty vocalist without being a diva. There are no rules in the world of Josh Ottum, yet somehow, things run as if the strictest of laws were in place. Think: War meets Peace, Love meets Hate, Thrift Store meets Boutique.
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