As an avid listener of music, I realize that it is important to attempt to explore various artists and genres of music from time to time. For the past few years I have been stuck in a rut of listening to all of the same content; I refused to step out of my comfort zone. Due to my recent overflow of boredom, I had an urgency to try something new. While I have my genres and artists that I am partial to, I have found a new artist that I really enjoy for some weird reason, although I am not too sure why.
With everything going on and the need for social distancing, the one thing that is keeping me sane is listening to a variety of music. Now that I have spare time to listen to new types of music, I really enjoy absorbing new material. I never like to judge a song based upon a single listen because it’s impossible to get the true impact or feel of an artist or their music through a brief listening.
While this artist is by no means “new”, he is definitely newer to the scene than what I am used to listening to. I finally put down Radiohead’s Ok Computer to try something else and I love it.
This artist is none other than Oliver Tree. He has garnered a decent amount of recognition and success online with his strange, colorful, and controversial music videos as well as appearing on several podcasts. His music overall has a certain indie aesthetic.
Some of my favorite tracks include “Cash Machine,” “Hurt,” “Alien Boy,” “Miracle Man,” and his new track “Let Me Down”. His new track was released in spite of the pushback of the release for his new music as well as the cancelled tour. The music video was, as it always is, very strange and colorful. One of his most iconic music videos was definitely the video for his track, “Hurt”.
While his videos look very vibrant and have fun elements to them, they also incorporate things to make the viewer uncomfortable. In the video for the track “Hurt”, (which was a rather detailed and arduous video to make), he gets decapitated in the music video.
In the “Miracle Man” music video, he is getting injured repeatedly throughout. The contrast of the bright colored clothes, props, overall pop-like, and upbeat background music to the gore scenes and dark lyrics go together tastefully. This contrast of matching the happy exterior with the much darker interior is something I find quite fascinating.
The overall moody indie lyrics cast over upbeat pop-like melodies and intriguing beats is definitely collaged wonderfully in this case. The videos flow well with the music and are just as entertaining.
All in all, if you want something new and different, definitely check out some of Oliver Tree’s music and videos, as I highly recommend them. I rather enjoyed it as a nice break away from my regular routine. Out of all the new artists I have checked out in the past few weeks, I know I’ll continue to listen to him for a while.