Carey Ott--Lucid Dream (2006)

Artist-Carey Ott
Album-Lucid Dream
Release Date-Aug 8, 2006
Genre/Style-Indie-Pop Singer/ Songwriter
Size-63M
Quality-HQ

Biography-Hailing from Chicago, Carey Ott got his start in the mid-'90s with a band called Torben Floor. Backed by his brother Chris Ott on bass, Doug Sale on drums, and John Mooney on guitar, Ott gained a following on the Chicago club circuit for his pensive, confessional songs. Due in no small part to Ott's contributions (he wrote all of the band's songs), Torben Floor managed to snag gigs at popular festivals like SXSW and at clubs like Schubas, Doubledoor, and Metro. The band managed to release one album, Live Music in the Apartment, in 1999, but was unable to land a major record deal. It was during this time that Ott met and eventually teamed up to cut a demo with producer Ed Tinley. Frustrated with their inability to land a major record deal, Torben Floor split up shortly after their debut was released.

The breakup turned out to be a big break for Ott. His manager passed Ott's demo (the one he cut with Tinley) along to Nashville-based producer Ray Kennedy, who liked what he heard and in turn handed the demo over to Dualtone Records. A couple representatives from the label flew out to Chicago, caught one of Ott's solo gigs at the Subterranean, and consequently offered him a record deal. Ott, not missing a beat, moved to Nashville, met up with Tinley, and got to work on the songs for his first Dualtone release, Lucid Dream, which came out in the summer of 2006. It was around this time that Ott's song "Am I Just One" was featured on an episode of the ABC television series Grey's Anatomy, providing Ott with a boost that launched him from the indie circuit into the mainstream.


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Review-by Stewart Mason As a melodicist, Chicago singer/songwriter Carey Ott is in the Neil Finn school of low-key classicism; the songs on his debut album are resolutely tuneful but never blatantly hook-filled. Strong echoes of Paul McCartney regularly appear as well, most blatantly in "Mother Madam," and at his best, Ott is a worthy heir to both. First single "Am I Just One" (featured on a key episode of the medical drama Grey's Anatomy long before the album even came out) starts Lucid Dream off most encouragingly. Immediately, however, "Daylight" and "Hard to Change" sound unnervingly like carbon copies of each other. Throughout the rest of Lucid Dream, it becomes clear that Ott is working from a fairly limited set of songwriting and arrangement tricks: the upward modulation on the chorus, the shift into a slightly cracked falsetto at key points, the perfectly deployed handclaps. As a result, Lucid Dream has a somewhat workmanlike quality to it, one that rarely slips into the sense of effortlessness that a truly great melodic pop album has. It's a somewhat flawed, but nonetheless promising, debut.

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