Oceanator on literature, music, walks, coffee & FaceTime

With the lauded record Things I Never Said in contention for best album of the year — Oceanator signs to Polyvinyl and presents a Week in Pop curation, courtesy of Elise Okusami. Things I Never Said stands as a bright spot of commiseration, kindred companionship and an electrified force of nature in the face of an absurd, caustic and aberrated era. This album begins by parting ways with difficult attachments on the rhythmic revs of "Goodbye, Goodnight", observing contemporary cataclysms with a sharp power pop prowess on "A Crack in the World", to painting elaborate and artistically expansive portraits of what happens in the wakes of maligned relationships with the inward escaping "Hide Away". "January 21st" jams with the calculated steady guitar sways of the 90s Matador catalog, as "Heartbeat" jumps and skips with the tenacity of tens of thousand garage bands from the 2010s right before arriving at the monument to new-new-new-romantic pop perfection — "I Would Find You".

Oceanator conquers the power pop echelon with an arsenal of power chord cruise missiles, lyrically anchored in the important and evocative moments from our ever progressing life stories like “Walk With You”. The roar of existential and immediate causes for alarm are mixed with a cautious yet confident optimism; on display with the closing tracks "The Sky is Falling" and "Sunshine", where Okusami asserts, 'I'm okay on my own.' TINS weathers the familiar tempests we contend with today by unleashing amplified anthems of resilience, self-care/esteem, healthy relationships, beautiful bonds, hard goodbyes and more with a sun-kissed sound to make you smile, cry and a universal sense of care.

Elise Okusami of Oceanator’s Week in Pop

N.K Jemisin (and reading in general)

I started reading the Broken Earth Trilogy and absolutely love it. The first line of the first book is, Let’s talk about the end of the world, shall we? so obviously I was immediately hooked. The stories are huge and have so many moving parts that all come together. It’s really just fantastic. I haven’t started the third book yet because I don’t want it to end quite yet, so in between I’m reading a collection of her stories called How Long ’til Black Future Month?. Then I’ll go back and finish. She’s got a bunch of other trilogies, too, so I’m looking forward to getting into those!

Music (duh)

I went back and listened to a lot of stuff I used to listen to more in middle and high school and that was super comforting. But there’s also a ton of great new music coming out right now. Some of my favorites of the last few months are Jeff Rosenstock — No Dream, Nnamdï — Brat, Illuminati Hotties — Free I.H. and Open Mike Eagle — Anime, Trauma, and Divorce. There’s a bunch more but I could go on all day about this.

Walks

I got out of the habit of going on walks pre-pandemic so it’s been nice to get back into that. I live near a really big park so I like to walk over there and just take different paths every time and walk aimlessly while listening to a podcast or a record or something. I also spent some time walking around my neighborhood and further outside of my immediate neighborhood to see what sorts of stuff I might have missed. I used to work in a different neighborhood and also play shows elsewhere so I didn’t get to spend as much time in my neighborhood before all this, so I guess that’s one positive.

Coffee

I’m not a big caffeine person but I like the ritual of making coffee. I was doing a cold brew batch thing over the summer where I’d do it every other day. Now that it’s getting colder I’ve been doing hot coffee and I like weighing out the beans and grinding them and doing the whole thing in the chemex. It’s a good way for me to get the day going, even if I sometimes forget to actually drink the whole cup of coffee. I’ve also been branching out and trying to find more beans I like!

FaceTime

I used to hate FaceTime and all those video calls so much but now I do this all the time. It’s just nice to see people’s faces when you’re talking to them since you can’t see their faces in real life. I don’t know if I’ll still like this as much when it’s safe to go out and socialize again though.

Oceanator’s opus Things I Never Said is available now via Polyvinyl.