Owl City's All Things Bright and Beautiful..Is

Owl City (Adam Young) released his latest masterpiece yesterday. After downloading it to iTunes and listening through it three times, it's obvious that he has picked up where he left off with Ocean Eyes and is delivering a heaping helping of what got him to where he is today.

If you loved Fireflies you'll love this release. Thirteen songs, plus an online book provide all the unexpected twists of melody, electronically generated rhythms, poignant pauses, tight harmonies and a dash of disco fever.

Sometimes Adam starts with a simple guitar strum or plain piano chords, but with Mr. Young it builds and builds--sometimes dropping off suddenly. You can count on rich and sometimes thrilling swells of accompanyment to his clear, youthful singing. I know that I am completely smitten, and have blogged twice about him--February 12 and February 19.

One complete surprise on this album is the track January 28, 1986. It features President Ronald Reagan's speech after the Challenger Disaster with minimal background by the artist. Then, it swings immediately into the rhythmic celebration of Galaxies and you're off!

I made notes on each song, but I don't really need to present them here. The Devo-like hollering in Kamakazi was something new from Owl City. Mostly, though, it was more of what we want. Not sure which song will be his next radio hit, but you could probably take anything off this album and use it.

I Remember the Challenger Disaster

It's hard to believe that the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up 25 years ago. Like anyone who was around then, I have memories of where I was when I heard it and how I felt afterwards. It's that sick feeling that I associate with a few other unnatural disasters in my life, including the Kennedy assassinations, John Lennon's murder and, of course, the most horrible thing to happen (to Americans) in my lifetime--the World Trade Center destruction on 9/11/2001.

I was getting ready for work in San Francisco. I was watching it on TV (as I recall) and saw the sickening "wrongness" of the spacecraft in flight. You know, after 25 years maybe my memories are unclear. I may not have seen the images until later. I do know that we all felt stunned during that workday. I just read that in that pre-Internet, pre-cell phone time, almost everyone knew about it almost instantly. Thank TV and radio, and lots of calls on the land lines.

I'd watched numerous other NASA space flight liftoffs, including John Glenn on our old black-and-white TV. Watching launches become a ritual familiar to my family. Early morning, groggy by the set, waiting and waiting for that one small event. "T-minus X minutes and counting" became a familiar phrase.

Astronauts are genuine heroes, even as they have become NASA employees doing various jobs in space today. They were especially heroic in the early days, when the risk was so extreme. We didn't expect these "routine" flights to ever go wrong, but as we all know now, two shuttles have vaporized in space.

So sad, so shocking. And we went on to launch many more, successfully.