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Jeremy Enigk - OK Bear
| Avclub |
| Jeremy Enigk floundered a bit after coming out of the gate incredibly strong: The world first knew him as the inimitable voice behind Sunny Day Real Estate, the emo progenitor whose first two albums have stood the test of time. A strange split derailed things: Enigk went Christian, to the consternation of some of his bandmates, though he went on to release an incredible solo debut, the orchestra-enhanced Return Of The Frog Queen. But the past dozen years have been hit-or-miss, to put it kindly: A Sunny Day reunion fizzled, as did a regrouping with two members as The Fire Theft. Another solo album, 2006’s World Waits, sounded flat and uninspired, even with the secret weapon of Enigk’s dramatic voice....full text |
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| Pitchfork |
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The unique power of music is to give meaning to that which has no inherent meaning. A note, on its own, is just a sound. Same with a chord or the smack of a drum stick on a snare. But by organizing those sounds, music can give them incredible power, and it can do the same for words and phrases. OK Bear, Jeremy Enigk's third solo album and second since the break-up of his band Sunny Day Real Estate, offers quite a few examples of this phenomenon, making melodic sense out of puzzling couplets like "Crimson angel/ I live and plant there still" and "Morning arise/ Traced by surprise/ In an ocean wind the waves are lost." I'm not saying his lyrics are senseless on paper-- there's inherent power in a phrase such as "They got it all, but they ain't got emotion"-- but I am saying this album lives or dies on Enigk's ability to weave a bunch of disjointed images and odd, fragmentary sensory phrases into something that feels like a story or a coherent emotional statement. Thankfully, the album mostly lives, and it's a small testament to the seemingly paradoxical ability of ethereal, bodyless music to affect us viscerally. To back up a bit, OK Bear is a confident modern-rock album, and Enigk spends considerably less time fussing with big arrangements and sweeping gestures than he did on 2006's World Waits. These songs are among his most direct, mature compositions yet in spite of their often oblique lyrics, and his delicately ragged voice is in fine form as he works to sell them. He controls the intensity of each song quite well--"April Storm" in particular benefits from a great deal of restrain in the early verses, and you really feel it when he opens up in the last verse and the guitars start to grind a little....full text |
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| Popmatters |
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Compared to the emo artists with which he is often (and usually inappropariately) grouped, Jeremy Enigk has always displayed more maturity, intelligence, and depth in his music. While bands like Dashboard Confessional and the Promise Ring were reaching their artistic peak with a brand of poppy, punk-inspired rock that expressed relationship woes and adolescent angst in a very literal (and often whiney) manner, Enigk was delving into art-rock, folk, and Americana in order to make sense of issues a bit beyond the general malaise, alienation, and boredom of his peers—and doing so using music and lyrics which displayed greater sophistication and sensitivity than most bands out there. During his decade-long association with Sunny Day Real Estate, Enigk never sacrificed substance for the sake of commercial appeal. And even though this approach surely lost him income, it certainly won him critical respect and fan loyalty—an increasingly rare phenomenon in the world of popular music. Enigk’s music was at turns emotionally dense and euphoric, anthemic and provincial, difficult and accessible, angular and pastoral, often seeming to owe more to ‘70s theatrical rockers like David Bowie and Queen than ‘80s emo progenitors like Rites of Spring and Fugazi. And even when Enigk got god, his music never became overtly religious, devoutly simplistic, or preachy, but rather subtly reflected something more magical, ethereal, and elusive. Over his ten-plus years as a solo artist, too, Enigk’s output has been rife with emotional honesty, an extension of his work with Sunny Day Real Estate. And he continues down that path on OK Bear....full text |
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