Waterworks

Pastoral Pennsylvanian indie pop band the Ocean Blue made a welcome return with 2013's Ultramarine, their first new album since 1999's Davy Jones' Locker. In between those two releases was a 2004 EP called Waterworks, released on tiny Colorado indie What Are Records? The six songs that comprised the EP were a charming mix of hazy, synth-led dream pop, Big Star guitar jangle, and traces of the new romantic sounds that inspired their debut way back in 1989. Operating for the first time without founding drummer Rob Minnig, they brought in replacement Peter Anderson, who gelled well with bassist Bobby Mittan, creating a strong backbone on the punchy, melodic "Pedestrian" and the '60s pop wonder of "Ticket to Wyoming." The Smiths remain an obvious influence on the wryly shuffling "Sunshower," while "The Northern Jetstream" is a delightfully proggy, synthedelic pastiche of inspired pop. Though the Ocean Blue toured to promote the release, it never quite gained traction and over the following years became a rather hard-to-find rarity within their catalog. When the band's frontman, David Schelzel, co-founded cooperative Minneapolis indie label Korda Records in 2012, reviving Waterworks was added to the newly re-energized band's agenda. Following the release of their comeback album, Ultramarine, they recorded three new tracks to complement Waterworks' original six and reissued it as a full album in 2014. Recorded a decade later, the new material dovetails fairly well with the original EP. The British influence, which has always held them as outsiders in their hometown of Hershey, Pennsylvania, is once again apparent on "Golden Girl," a stately, lush ballad that wouldn't be out of place on a Richard Hawley album. "Take a Broken Heart" follows a similar moody romantic path, while the catchy "Can't Let Go" mixes elements of shoegaze and hard-driving indie pop. While not quite a proper follow-up album, the expanded Waterworks reissue reintroduces some of the Ocean Blue's high-quality late-career material while offering a glimpse at their future direction. ~ Timothy Monger