Scott Matthew – There Is An Ocean That Divides…

Scott Matthew and his heart-on-sleeve voice to end all heart-on-sleeve voices returns with his sophomore effort, There Is An Ocean That Divides And With My Longing I Can Charge It With A Voltage That’s So Violent To Cross It Would Mean Death. At its heart, this record is a bitterly somber affair. Witness ‘Ornament’ and its (and maybe the album’s) most telling lyric: “I’ve taken drugs, I’ve taken sides/ And the devil himself taught me alibis/ Now you’ve seen all that I’ll ever be/ It kills me ‘cause you’re still not leaving.” It’s a brilliant, stunning, haunting album clearly meant to be listened to alone on headphones. But”¦ The main problem with a number of songs from this otherwise wonderful record is the Nietzsche argument about Christianity: if everything is made to be the same, then nothing stands out. The same holds true for a handful of tracks on There Is An Ocean: if every one of handful of tracks contain some kind of background orchestral arrangement, then the arrangements lose all meaning and point because they are no longer special. The string arrangement is meant to be used as a highlighter for a certain piece of a song or a song itself. But if that technique is used ad nauseam, then there’s nothing left to highlight. If anything, the un-highlighted parts and/or songs become highlighted, missing the point completely.And it’s a shame because Matthew is a great songwriter because of his subtlety; orchestration is anything but. The juxtaposition of the two doesn’t work here because neither the strings nor Matthew inherently exist in order to oppose the other. But here they do. The artist and background orchestration are supposed to exist symbiotically for the benefit of a song. A malevolent relationship between the two, however inadvertent, only works to destroy the beauty of a song. The antagonism is most exemplified (read: worst) during ‘White Horse.’ It’s simply a frustrating listen because below the overbearingly smaltzy strings is a tender piano serenade. You’d never know it, of course, if you weren’t listening carefully ”“ a casual listen will only reveal the quartering of a dead horse. That said, the mix doesn’t ever bury Matthew’s voice so it can be said that at least someone was paying enough attention to ensure that even the most heavy-handed orchestration is never the focal point of the album.‘Community’ is on the opposite end. With is massively bare-bones structure ”“ acoustic guitar, accordion, minimal percussion ”“ the song features no strings and, by extension, is necessarily noteworthy. That isn’t to say that the songwriting doesn’t hold up by itself; instead, it’s a well-written song in addition to the fact that it stands out because it’s all alone in its existence. Its bouncy nature carries the beautiful melody through the superficial reason to pay attention to it. Moreover, the quasi-title track, ‘There Is An Ocean That Divides,’ is the barest of any song here: A simple piano ballad, it’s most striking because of or, perhaps, in spite of, the fact that it features little more than piano, Matthew’s genteel voice, and the whisper of Chie Tanaka.Matthew’s songs themselves suggest lament and loneliness; they don’t need a cheerleader shouting it out. And that’s the real disgrace here: fantastic songwriting buried below utterly inane string arrangements that seemingly only exist to suggest to listeners, “Hey, this song is meaningful!” We got it, thanks. While only half of the album suffers from overstuffed production and arrangement, it’s still a problem for Ocean as a whole. After all, the key word in “half of a great album” is “half.”Hey, look at that: I made it through the entire review without mentioning how pointlessly long the album title is... 75% Scott Matthew on Myspace