Oscar Lang offers a jangly debut with ‘Chew The Scenery’
The bedroom pop prince stirs things up with a debut album drawing on a medley of indie influences
Photo: Press
Chew The Scenery sees Oscar Lang marry together scuzzier percussion with softer melodic bops to create an experimental album that approaches big-sound anthems head-on.
Since he started releasing music in 2017, Oscar Lang has carved his own corner of indie-pop with an arsenal of influences. From mastering the dreamy pop-rock of songs like Easy to Love to the post-punk influences on recent EPs like Antidote to Being Bored, we should always have expected Oscar’s debut album to be a medley of styles.
It becomes apparent early on during Chew The Scenery that Oscar is finding a lot of modern life hard to swallow. Ruminating on the realities of a world often seen behind a screen and mapping how heartbreak changes as time goes on, Chew the Scenery interprets his lowkey angst into scuzzy and experimental takes on his classic bedroom pop.
The album kicks off with the gargling futuristic sounds of Our Feature Presentation, an introduction of organised chaos which points towards the different avenues of sound the album will explore. If anything, you’re left wishing it was longer and had been pushed further into a fully-fledged anthem.
21st Century Hobby comes in with jangly guitar and whispers of Declan Mckenna as Oscar sings about the trials and tribulations of life in the shadow of social media. I Could Swear begins the intermittent stream of tracks reminiscent of Blossoms (listen out for Are You Happy?) and that comforting indie sound, like meeting a friend for a pint on a weeknight. Stuck initiates the dabbling into scuzzier, punkier sounds whilst Yeah! channels 90s video games via Brit-pop.
The musings of young love that’s growing up, lost, but still clinging on are woven into the strings on Quarter Past Nine: “She says she fell in love with a different guy […], he’s comin’ round tonight/ She says she wants me gone by quarter past nine,” fuelling the unassuming melancholia that permeates the album. Take Time is the natural progression where self-reflection takes hold of the lyrics. “My neck is chokin’ as her mouth goes to open ‘bout the love we once had / I thought she’s jokin’ but she seems to be broken, didn’t think it was bad,” he sings, marking a revelation, and thus a maturity that has evolved throughout the track list and its tonal shifts.
Final Call is perhaps the song where Oscar Lang seems to be most comfortable, with delicate and subdued piano meeting undulating strings to connect the dots that each track before has left behind. This understated but beautiful track signifies that we might be coming to the end and, sure enough, the next track is the finale. Thank You draws a line underneath the reflections and disenchantment Oscar has charted about living in the modern world and navigating relationships. “Now I'm all on my own, I can see how I’ve grown,” is the line that sums up where the album has taken us.
This record hints at more than it delivers but, let it be known that what it delivers is an interesting and easy listen which gets better each time you hit play. Chew The Scenery paves the way for Oscar Lang’s future albums to go further and emphasises how it is still only just the beginning for Dirty Hit’s bedroom-pop prince.