And I will not apologize for liking it so much.

Don’t get me wrong - I am very aware of how cheesy it is. Hell - the whole album is quite literally drowned in cheese and sugar.

And I love every second of it.

(Except maybe for “The Bird and The Worm”, which is almost equally as unnecessary as “Little Bird” on the latest Imogen Heap album - not bad songs, but I just couldn’t get the hang of them. What is it with “Bird” songs anyhow?)

So - without further redo, let me show you why:

[0:00] The track starts off with a mellow combination of a simple rhythm (love the reduced snare) plus an epiano over a sustained B4 organ sound in the background. So much for cheese.

[0:16] It then quickly picks up a climbing pace, adds nice bass (which is very excellent throughout the album) and some fiddly synth in the background.

[0:30] At the first chorus, a synth sweeps its filter up in a very

[0:36] playful manner (genius - every time I hear it). Then we are introduced to the very awesome…

[0:38] …CLAP - in full stereo width at double tempo, while the female voices and an additional synth phase around the backside of your head.

[0:44] Small kickback to the quiet (plus Hi-Hats) and we go back

[0:59] to the sweet bass. Really dig the fiddly synth juxtaposed to it. More complex drum programming now.

[1:13] A second chorus, building similar to the first (holding back the claps at first, now, adding sweet Hats) leads into

[1:27] a rather brutal expansion of soundscape, which is probably my most favorite part of the song. The lead voice gets set slightly to the background while nearly shouting - some reverb thrown in and the signal slightly distorted. YUM. At this point, it’s just the bass, synth, small drumset and claps around the vocals.

[1:41] Then a sub-break where the whole signal is just faded in and out to a minor crash. Why? THAT’S WHY.

[1:48] Some additional snare drums build it to the crescendo.

Full Frontal Stereo Clap and Crash-gasm now.

[1:57] Break to background pad plus female aaaaah’ing (wait, what?) plus bass to prepare for the surprise when the song breaks into

[2:12] a completely silly euro-dance synth pattern with appropriate bumm-tschack drum programming. AWESOME. Neat Hi-Hats, coming in again.

[2:25] Voice kicks in and exchanges a conversation with the silly synth that bubbles back and forth. You have got to appreciate that delay on the vocals here.

[2:56] That clicking chime that you now recognize was there the whole song by the way, always situated closely to the crashes - quite smart arrangement - took me a couple dozen times to hear them there at all.

As a general meta-theme, I understand this song as a variation on a decade of neo-loudness war and sidechain compressor pumping. The song is loud. And compressed. And it is pumped to the extend of literally pumping the master channel. Yet, the whole structure is kept very neat - hardly escaping 5 to 7 major components at once.

It may be over-the-top, but it is obviously not ashamed of that. Only three songs from the album go as far as going full euro-dance-esque, but these occasions serve well as a unique handwriting by the artist. Yes, I can see similarities to other artists in some of the songs and yes, many will not like this handwriting. I certainly do.

And again - yes, the cheese is there. Yes, the lyrics are pretty much babbling nonsense. I’m not saying that this song is better off by lacking lyrics that have… actual discernible content. The vocals are just part of the instrumentation in this song in particular. The rest of the album has a mixture of either similar level of nonsense or stuff that I have already forgot. I don’t care.

I adore the tight arrangement, the reduced songwriting and drum programming, the over-the-top synths and why-not-just-fade-the-song-in-and-out-here gimmicks. Because they’re not just a negligible byproduct of overproduction. I’m sure they are actually meant that way.

I am very curious to see what the next album will bring. And I’m not sure whether I will eventually grow tired of Ocean Eyes. But I’m quite sure that I won’t grow tired of “The Tip Of The Iceberg” anytime soon.