Oliver Tree - Ugly is Beautiful (Review)

Oliver Tree - Ugly is Beautiful (Review)

7/17/20

From his fast, distorted pop-punk songs to his more EDM-focused rap songs, Oliver Tree has been a pioneer in today's genre-fusing scene. Over his musical career which began with his song with EDM producer Whethan from 2016. This song made a splash over the internet after Tree gained some traction from Vine and his relationships with YouTube comedian Cherdleys and friends. Since then, he's cultivated a perfect little style which he made an album with and released it finally last night. It's been a long ride for us impatient fans, but we've finally made it to the release of Ugly Is Beautiful.

The album throws us right into the action as it does with most songs. The vocals in ever song other than "1993" begin with vocals over an intro or pre-chorus section that will likely be repeated. Track one was a personally pleasant surprise. It was one of the only tracks that Atlantic Records didn't force him to release before the album. Its beat switches manage to feel so fluid and intertwined within each other that formulate to construct this amazing track. It was definitely an odd way to begin the album experience, but it does strangely well.

Throughout the album, we witness a range of good to mediocre tracks, but every track is catchy. It feels like a thin variety of Oliver-style bangers, yet it never seems to get old. Of course the lyrical themes and instrumentals are close to the same, but there's still a clear distinction between songs. The place this album thrives is its instrumentals, mixing, and mastering. Everything feels so crisp and like hundreds of hours were put into tampering and fixing every little problem this album might have had. A lot of albums nowadays don't feel unfinished, but there are obvious problems with instrumentals that the artist was probably too lazy to fix. In this album, Oliver Tree puts in the work, and the pay-off is incredible.

Like everything, though, this album does have a few downsides. When I think "album", the first word I'd think of to relate it to would be music, performance, or experience. Oliver's performance on this record was great, and it is obviously a piece of music, but it lacked an experience. With albums, an experience never has to be big, and it can be different things depending on what the artists intends. Though, the artist should make it explicitly clear inside our outside of the album how people should listen to it. Other than the obvious "no skips" rule, Oliver really just gave fans the album to listen to it at their own pace and in their own way. Like any album, I still normally wouldn't skip songs, but it feels like an album that could contain almost as much enjoyment if I shuffled through it. For me, this is because of the albums lyrics. Obviously, I'm not saying every album has to tell a clear story, even though this one somewhat does, but each song should still feel connected with each other. Otherwise, artists who pioneered mainstream music would have released their songs in more profitable singles.

In conclusion, it's hard to see where this album wanted itself to go, but despite this, it's a goddamn masterpiece. Each and every song is a banger at its core, but so much more after a few listens. It's clear to see that this album took a lot of effort, but if more effort was put into the arranging outside of the songs, we could be looking at a damn-near perfect record. My favorite track is probably Miracle Man, just because it's a lovely banger with great, catchy, and easy-to-learn lyrics. This was really hard for me to pick, so my honorable "favorite track" mentions include "Cash Machine", "Me, Myself & I", "Bury Me Alive", "I'm Gone", "Jokes On You!", "Again & Again", and "Hurt". My least favorite track has to be "Let Me Down", the only reason being that the lyrics weren't that great and I personally couldn't connect with them. Take this with a grain of salt, though, because every single track on this album is one that I will come back to and enjoy endlessly. Giving this album a 1-10 using half numbers, I give this album an 8.5/10 with a five-word description of: "a mostly damn great album".


Image sources (in order):
https://www.reddit.com/r/olivertree/comments/gnsf3v/ugly_is_beautiful_desktop_wallpaper_oc/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-lAjeMlA1Q
https://thissongissick.com/post/oliver-tree-bury-me-alive/
https://thekey.xpn.org/2019/03/07/oliver-tree-the-foundry/
https://www.reddit.com/r/olivertree/comments/fmiuvv/ugly_is_beautiful/