Swimming With Dolphins: Water Colours
Posted September 17, 2011
By TCMRB,
Swimming With Dolphins has been on my list of "need-to-listen-to" artists for a while now. Finally this blog and their new album gave me a reason to listen to them. I always knew they had a style like Owl City and I had heard a few clips of their music on iTunes before; but I had never listened to one of their songs all the way through. I thoroughly regret never listening to them before. Owl City and Swimming With Dolphins are so similar in sound that sometimes I wonder if I am actually listening to Owl City. So, if you like Owl City this is the CD for you. The frontman of Swimming With Dolphins, Austin Tofte, was actually formerly with Owl City.
Swimming With Dolphins' first record entitled Ambient Blue EP was good, but not amazing. Adam Young, the frontman of Owl City, helped to produce Ambient Blue, which turned out very, very mellow. Now Tofte has come out with his sophomore release. I have to say the CD is really solid. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to all the songs and I loved the variety on the project as well. Tofte made a great mix of get-up-and-dance songs and slow, mellow songs.
In this review I am actually going to start off with the last song on the album, because Swimming With Dolphins gained my respect with the song "Good Times," which features Mod Sun. Mod Sun rapping on the track made me literally jump up and (in my head) scream. I was so super excited to hear some rap on this album. I thoroughly love electronic, popish music; but rap is definitely my favorite type of music. Tofte made me a life-long fan by adding rap to his album.
The album opened, however, with a really great song too. The song "Holiday" sets the mood for the rest of the album. It is really upbeat, and arguably one of the best songs on the album. It has a female vocalist on it (I have no clue who it is. If you know please let me know, because I would love to know who she is). She really adds a lot to the song and adds something I cannot really put into words. (I am pretty sure she appears on a couple of the other songs too).
Probably the best song after that is the title track "Watercolors." Why is it that the title track usually turns out really good on every album? Anyways, the song has a really nice beat and actually mixes both styles of get up and dance, with slow and mellow.
I really love how the album turned out. I am super excited about Swimming With Dolphins, and I am glad that I finally got a chance to listen to them. As I said earlier, I am no officially a life-long fan of Swimming With Dolphins.
Favorite Song: Good Times
Favorite Lyrics: "I'm a live; and that's all i can ask for tonight. Take a dive. We're never gonna know unless we try." (From the song "Good Times")
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