You remember my distaste for Bebo Norman's newer work... WELL, at first Listen to his new album “Ocean” (comes out on Tuesday), I’m pleasantly surprised. He is still a far cry from the sophisticated simplicity of his first two or three albums as a singer/songwriter, but this is a nice step in the right direction. Quite honestly, his last studio album (self-titled and the first from the giant label BEC) was pretty terrible, so really it was hard to get any worse. I have to accept that he’s merely a singer now, the songwriter part has been shouldered by several folks. I look forward to reading the album liner to see who he wrote with. Keeping that in mind, overall I’d give it a B-… He definitely goes deeper than he has in the past 5 years, but the tunes are still merely off-the-shelf repetitive pop hooks.
“Sing Over Me” and “God of My Everything” have definite potential. The first single, "Here Goes" I'm not too much a fan of, but it is a fine pop song. I suppose I’ll go see him when he comes back to MSP… for the 10th time...
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