I almost feel unwor­thy of the sounds I’m hear­ing. I hon­estly don’t know how else to sum up my feel­ings on Owl City’s label debut Ocean Eyes. If you don’t know, I first got hooked on Adam Young’s instru­men­tal music he called Port Blue. I was even­tu­ally intro­duced to his elec­tronic pop ven­ture he was call­ing Owl City. As Port Blue, Adam’s tal­ent radi­ated from every sin­gle note com­ing from the speak­ers. Every­thing about Owl City encom­passes child-like inno­cence with­out sac­ri­fic­ing relevance.

The whole record is sim­ply astound­ing, it’s par­tic­u­larly hard to select high­lights. At this point, my per­sonal favorite of the record is a track enti­tled “Vanilla Twi­light” (listen/lyrics below). Iron­i­cally, this par­tic­u­lar track sam­ples my favorite Port Blue record­ing sim­ply enti­tled “Seag­ulls” (which was unre­leased). Lyri­cally “Vanilla Twi­light” cap­tures every­thing sur­round­ing my def­i­n­i­tion of cute. “Cute” seems to be a weird word to describe music… you should lis­ten to this track before you make that judg­ment. I can’t begin to explain to what depths I love the lyrics to this track.

The stars lean down to kiss you
And I lie awake and miss you
Pour me a heavy dose of atmosphere

‘Cause I’ll dose off safe and soundly
But I’ll miss your arms around me
I’d send a post­card to you dear
’Cause I wish you were here

I’ll watch the night turn light blue
But it’s not the same with­out you
Because it takes two to whis­per qui­etly
The silence isn’t so bad
’Till I look at my hands and feel sad
’Cause the spaces between my fin­gers
Are right where yours fit perfectly

I’ll find the repose in new ways
Though I haven’t slept in two days
’Cause cold nos­tal­gia chills me to the bone
But drenched in vanilla twi­light
I’ll sit on the front porch all night
Waist-deep in thought because when I think of you
I don’t feel so alone…

As many times as I blink, I’ll think of you… tonight
I’ll think of you tonight

When vio­let eyes get brighter
And heavy wings grow lighter
I’ll taste the sky and feel alive again
And I’ll for­get the world that I knew
But I swear I won’t for­get you
Oh, if my voice could reach back through the past
I’d whis­per in your ear:
“Oh dar­ling, I wish you were here”

“Vanilla Twi­light” from the album Ocean Eyes. Per­formed by Owl City. Writ­ten by Adam Young. Released by Uni­ver­sal Repub­lic Records (a divi­sion of Uni­ver­sal Music Group). ©2009 Ocean City Park (ASCAP).

As an extra bonus, a hand­ful of songs were co-written by Matt Thiessen (lead singer of Relient K) and some even fea­ture his vocals. The music is out now exclu­sively on iTunes and will be released on July 28^th. I’m usu­ally not a advo­cate of pur­chas­ing music through iTunes, but it’s seri­ously a deal. You get 12 tracks plus two bonus tracks for $7.99.