Surf With Me4 Out Of 5 Stars
Barely out of High School when they got their record deal, Pennsylvania youngsters The Ocean Blue released their 1989 debut in a period when it looked like Central PA might be the next big fertile ground for finding new bands. (After the likes of Live and The Innocence Mission, and a few others.) Their debut was a teenaged dream of loving The Smiths, Echo and The Bunneymen, and a whole bunch of British bands that fed into a glorious shimmering batch of songs.
Kicking of with a mesmerizing guitar figure on "Between Something And Nothing," singer/guitarist David Schelzel wraps his dreamlike voice around the atmospheric synthesizers of Steve Lau, setting up the CD for a series of songs that follow the same roadmap. The other alt-hit from this album, "Drifting Falling," opens with a very Roxy sounding sax line, and a vaporous melody. There are plenty of other dream-pop contenders to be found among the enigmatic song titles and the Morrissey cop "Frigid Winter Days," which is the only problem I ever had with this album.
The Ocean Blue would become more than the sum of their influences of their sophomore album, "Cerulean." However, for lovers of that period when edginess and prettiness walked hand in hand, "The Ocean Blue" stays as listenable today as when these young men first issued it at the turn of a decade.
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