This is a charming CD. The instrumentation is softly billowing. The vocals are sleepy-sweet sesame candy. All the same, it's kinda boring. It barely skirts Jack Johnson at times -- which may not be such a bad thing to Ola Podrida's composer/musician David Wingo. This is a sort of sadness that's been well mined and has already trickled into allergy pill commercials and lackluster, beautiful-people-in-love movies. It's earnest enough, but too ornate to be anything beyond comfy, half-snoozing music. There's a lot of that Sam Beam emo-folk quality diluting any sturdy resonance the music could have.
Perhaps it has something to do with Wingo's background as a film scorer. The careful orchestration of the music (check the softly droning keyboards coloring in "Instead") sets the scene so innately as to make you swoon, even as you're chafing under the nagging familiarity of it all. It's not raising the bar, and it's not carrying on a torch either. It's pretty as hell, but hopelessly middling mope rock. Interestingly, "Photo Booth" is almost like a sad-sack version of that song The New Main Street Singers were doing at the fair in A Mighty Wind. In fact, that's a good description of this music -- it's like a keen grasp of a certain popular sound without any of the gravity of, say, Elliott Smith. It's a wallpapery alternative to something entirely more gripping.
This is the sort of album one can feel guilty for not liking. Is it jaded to react negatively based on something feeling familiar? Chances are, there are a lot of listeners out there who could fall in love with this album. It's really lovely, despite the drabness of its melodic ideas, and perfect for a lazy day of numb reflection. But the emotional weight is undeniably dulled by the uniform quality of the songs. Much like the David Gordon Green films Wingo has scored, the intentions are unassailable, but the results are rather banal. It seems Ola Podrida is just another LP for the so-so file.
More about: Ola Podrida
