Build a bear glaceon in store

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Favorite songs: “Sons of Thunder” & “The Tornado” Least favorite songs: “Field Notes” & “Adam, Check Please” Overall rating: 2.4/5 stars
I’ve known for a while that old-style Owl City music I originally fell in love with is long gone, but I had hoped that whatever route he took for his new album would be just as captivating. Unfortunately, Coco Moon is a sharp turn in a direction I don’t think I’ll be following. While a few songs on the album are fun, standout surprises, they’re the exception by far.
The biggest disappointment in nearly all the songs is the songwriting. I fell in love with Owl City’s music because of the unique and dreamy lyrics, and many of Adam’s songs in recent years have been missing that quality entirely. Coco Moon especially suffers from awkwardly phrased, clunky lyrics filled with cliches, morals, and over-explained messages; there’s not a single song on the album that avoids it.
One of the other major issues that many songs on this album suffer from is undeservedly long runtimes. This album definitely could’ve used some input from another songwriter to help prevent that issue; I think many songs could be greatly improved simply by cutting a few verses and/or choruses here and there.
Something that I noticed but don’t have particularly strong feelings on is the wide variety in tone and topic between the songs on the album. While a lot of the time artists and/or management prefer keeping an album thematically consistent, I personally don’t mind having a wider variety — although I will admit that many of the transition between songs can be incredibly jarring.
Overall, Coco Moon is an album that feels like it’s constantly missing the mark. I won’t be re-listening to most of the songs off of it, but at the end of the day, I’m happy that Adam is making the music that he wants to and continuing to grow and evolve his style.
(Individual song reviews below! Favorite/least favorite lyrics spoiler-ed so you can ignore them if you want; I just included them for fun.)

Adam, Check Please

⭐⚫⚫⚫⚫ (1/5 stars)
The instrumentals are super fun, but I just can’t get over the lyrics. They’re super-literal, awkward, and clunky — and weirdly glorifying underpaid retail work. It feels like Adam’s trying to make a connection between his grocery store job and his music fame with the whole “climb the ladder” thing… Uh, no. Again, the music itself is really fun; the layering of instruments, synths, main vocals, backing vocals, etc. works really well. But in my opinion the lyrics are bad enough to make the song flop.
Worst lyric: all of it “I said, hey, I’m looking for Casey Connor / Here’s my resume”
Best lyric: “All those hours / And store-bought flowers set me free”

Under the Circus Lights

⭐⭐⚫⚫⚫ (2/5 stars)
Although I’m not personally a fan of this song, I can admit that Adam did a really fun and unique job blending pop style with musical/soundtrack style music in this song (and some others on the album). It veers a little too far into soundtrack at points for me to listen to it most of the time, though, especially with the announceapplause interlude. Again, the lyrics here are very cliche at times and overall leave something to be desired, but it’s not one of his worst offenders. The circus setting of the story just feels weird to me — it feels like Adam was trying to pick a whimsical setting for a romance (in the vein of “Super Honeymoon”/”The Yacht Club”) but it feels too grounded and misses that classic Owl City level of whimsy.
Worst lyrics: “I got cotton candy” / “She seemed to drown in the "oohs" and "ahhs"”
Best lyric: “Lighter than a feather / But careful as with a heavy heart / She seemed to fall forever”

Kelly Time

⭐⭐⭐⚫⚫ (3/5 stars)
Honestly, the fact that Mr. City decided to write a whole song about Cast Away from the point of view of the volleyball… There’s no word but iconic. It’s a bop, too, with super fun instrumentals and what feels like a genuinely fresh evolution of Owl City music. It’s so close to 4 stars for me, but it gets points off for a few things. One, awkward and often cliche lyrics throughout the song (I think in this case from trying to fit the lyrics to the movie dialogue at times). Two, for the fact that, like many songs on the album, it feels unnecessarily long — it keeps going several verses longer than it feels like it should. Three, connected to that, at times it goes overly hard trying to impart a moral into the song (one that’s not necessarily present in the original movie!). And four, it’s missing some of the whimsy I think Adam was going for, and ends up too grounded in its source material — even if it works for the song, but I prefer not to listen to movie summaries in the form of songs.
Worst lyric: “The most beautiful thing in the world / Is, of course, the gift of life” (He CHANGED IT — in the movie it’s “The most beautiful thing in the world is the world itself”.)
Best lyric: “And now I have to learn to let you go / Even though I love you more than you'll ever know / I'm getting used to half a heart and the way things are”

Field Notes

⭐⚫⚫⚫⚫ (1/5 stars)
Coming from someone who fell in love with Owl City’s music because of Adam’s songwriting… This is the worst songwriting I’ve ever seen from him. He wrote an overly literal song about one of the more obscure Christian fables, and topped it all off with an explanation that that was what he was doing in the song. Dude, ever heard of “show, don’t tell”? Also, I’ve read the fable and various explanations of it, and I think I understand what it’s trying to say, but I just don’t think the song communicates it well through the story. (Hence the need for the explanation at the end, I guess?) And I guess the music is alright… except for the minute-long instrumental solo at the end that feels like it’s a totally separate song. Overall, this whole song is just a mess.
Worst lyric: “It’s a fable, you see / And the moral is this”
Best lyric: (none)

Sons of Thunder

⭐⭐⭐⭐⚫ (4/5 stars)
Adam needs to do Christian rock more often! This song is a banger and probably my favorite song on the album. The music is incredible, and his vocals, plus the backing female vocals, work really well to give the song a sense of power. In terms of the theme — I’m not Christian myself, and tend to find Christian themes tiring in music. But the first part of this song was actually done really well, in my opinion. It’s only in the tail end of the song where it begins to get preachy that Adam starts to lose me. It’s another example of “show, don’t tell”; the song conveys its message perfectly well through the more symbolic first part of the song, but grinds the pace to a halt to unnecessarily lay it out plainly at the end. And as a final note — nimbusofghosts on Tumblr already made an excellent post about this, but as a queer + transgender person, there’s a few lines in the song that I really connect with.
Worst lyric: “Yeah, we serve a God / Who loves us to death / No matter what we've done / So don't lose hope / 'Cause he will lead us home”
Best lyric: “And even though we are strange and exquisitely scarred / We don’t need to pretend to be anything we aren’t”

The Tornado

⭐⭐⭐⭐⚫(4/5 stars)
WOW. It’s incredible to see such strong vocals from Adam, and the instrumentals really support them and the mood. You can really hear the influence of movie and musical scores in this song; the knowledge he gained from the Adam Young Scores project really shines here, even years later. This song really had the potential to be my favorite song on the album, but (like several other songs on the album) it really lost its momentum halfway through, which brings the song grinding to a halt. The energy and mood of the first half is totally absent in the second half. Once again, the length also does it no favors; I think this song could easily be improved by cutting several of the verses after the climax so it falls later in the song. And, once again, the preachy Christian overtones and explanation of the moral feel very heavy-handed to me.
Worst lyric: “No, I vowed I'd not be murdered by a monster in the sky that night / But if I went home to heaven, at least that's where I'd belong”
Best lyrics: “And then the nightmare started, it got deafeningly loud / Every fiber in me screamed out but I couldn't make a sound / . . . / And this was my prayer: / "Save me from this terrible nightmare"”

Vitamin Sea

⭐⭐⭐⚫⚫ (3/5 stars)
This song is pretty simple but fun. It’s a cheesy, pun-filled bop — solid, but never going to be in my top songs. This is probably the closest to Ocean Eyes that will ever happen, but I feel a little sad that it’s in the vein of “Dental Care” or “Rugs From Me To You” instead of some of the more beautiful, whimsical songs from that era. The cliche lyrics feel a little but less cliche because there are only so many puns out there, but among the many other cliche songs on the album it feels like just one more song filled with unoriginal phrases. Regardless, it’s a fun song with fun lyrics and fun instrumentals.
Worst lyric: “So heads up Nancy, don't get antsy / While I'm working on my tan”
Best lyrics: “Yeah, I gotta go now / 'Cause I'm a little worn down / And I'm a little burned out” / “I’ve gone coastal” (A pun on “going postal” — if you’re not familiar with the phrase, look it up. I do appreciate a bit of dark humor in Owl City songs.)

Dinosaur Park

⭐⭐⭐⚫⚫ (3/5 stars)
This song has so much potential, but falls flat for me in so many ways. The topic (dinosaur statues coming alive at night) and the music (chill, twinkly vibes) are both wonderful, and in some ways a return to a classic “dreamy” style. But the six-and-a-half minute runtime means that the singular topic and limited instrumentals are stretched out for far, far, far too long. By the time some more interesting instruments kick in midway to give the song a little more life, it’s already over three and a half minutes in. (For reference, “The Bird and the Worm” is just a little under three and a half minutes long.) It’s a fun, silly song, but not at all deserving of the gargantuan runtime.
Worst lyric: “Boy, I love Rapid City / And that hilltop of beasts”
Best lyric: “'Cause when the moon's sitting pretty / Above Rapid City / There's much more than meets the eye”

Learn How to Surf

⭐⭐⚫⚫⚫ (2/5 stars)
A fun, funky song, that is also incredibly baffling to me. It really just feels like Adam trying out some new synths with some quickly written cliche lyrics slapped on top. The verses and chorus, while both fun in their own ways, feel totally disconnected lyrically, like they belong to two different songs. Ironically, despite the fact that this song feels super short and insubstantial, it’s over three and a half minutes long, making it a pretty average song length for any of his older albums. I think it’s because this song suffers from the same issue many others on the album do, which is that so much of the song’s lyrics feel cliche, repeated, or like filler material. It’s a fun song but overall insubstantial; really nothing too interesting beyond the funky synths.
Worst lyric: “You can't stop the waves but you can learn how to surf” (A classic-to-the-point-of-cliche “inspirational” phrase… that he made the catchphrase and title of the song.)
Best lyric: (honestly, nothing stands out in particular)

The Meadow Lark

⭐⚫⚫⚫⚫ (1/5 stars)
Honestly, I keep forgetting this song exists. It doesn’t feel like it belongs on this album, much less that it was written by pop musician Owl City. While this might be an excellent song in a different context — An album of modern hymns, perhaps? Relaxing Christian moral music? — it’s jarring to hear it following “Learn How to Surf” on Coco Moon. Also, yet again, it tells its message perfectly fine through the story, but drags the end out by explaining it in the most literal terms possible, abruptly ending the narrative setting and tone of the song. (Also, as a sidenote, I do appreciate Adam’s shift in the language he uses to make it feel more like a hymn or otherwise traditional song!) But to sum up — in a different context, I’m sure this is a good song, but not on this album.
Worst lyric: “If I should live to see more days / I pray the Lord to guide my ways”
Best lyric: “And then, the curious thing occurred / On wings arrived a tiny bird / And troubled not by war or peace / She sang for us a melody”

My Muse

⭐⭐⭐⚫⚫ (3/5 stars)
What can I say, it’s a sweet song. It’s hard to critique a song as personal as this — it almost feels like it’s not meant for any of us to hear — but if there’s one thing I can point out, it’s the (once again) over-reliance on cliched language throughout the entire song, and some instances of awkward phrasing. I will say that this is one of the few songs on the album where it feels like just the right length (although ironically enough, it’s the shortest one on the album). It’s a simple, sweet, personal song, and even though I won’t be listening to it much, it’s one of those songs that just makes me happy for Adam.
Worst lyric: “Yeah, without a doubt, I took you out for coffee”
Best lyric: “There's nowhere else I'd rather be than here with you”
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Let me know your thoughts on the album and my review — what you agree or disagree with, any thoughts or context you’d like to share, or your own song rankings if you feel like sharing!

Searched every liquor store in Manhattan but couldn’t find a bottle of Pump Rose, gave up and ordered via door dash for twice the retail price
Show up with this trash. I don’t even like wine, just wanted to mark this moment of pump glory. The Scamdovals at Door Dash didn’t even offer a refund…..
Guess thats why they say Uber Eats is good as gold…
Fuck DoorDash

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Actual piece
Actual piece
A better view of \"PC 11 S\" than what I could get (this is the only pic I found online)
Hey, bikewrench! \_o/
I really hope you can help me identifying this freehub so I can order a new one and get back on the saddle. It's been weeks already, no nearby bike shop could even extract it.
The bike is a 2019 Scott Speedster 10, rim brakes. The hub is a Formula Team, with 28 holes with Syncros Race 23 rims. The spec can be seen in this page: https://www.dalescycles.com/scott-speedster-10-2019-road-bike-bronze.
The bike is okay except for the freehub that needs to be replaced. I managed to take it off with an 11mm hex wrench.
Thanks for any tips!
P.S The bearings are sealed:
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