The Diet

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What's that old saw about "laughing on the outside, crying on the inside"? That doesn't exactly describe Cullen Omori's second solo album, 2018's The Diet, but it's not entirely off the mark, either. Omori sounded sweetly bummed out on his previous effort, 2016's New Misery, which was primarily recorded with Omori handling all the instrumental chores himself. However, for these sessions, Omori and producer Taylor Locke brought in a handful of accompanists to help out, and the difference is clear from the outset. The Diet sounds brighter and more engaging than Omori's debut, and if this doesn't resemble sunshine pop, it is consistently warmer and more welcoming than New Misery. (Relocating from Chicago to Los Angeles probably didn't hurt, either.) His vocals soar higher too, and along with the music it helps camouflage the fact that Omori isn't a great deal happier about life than he was in the past. A major romantic breakup hit him while he was writing The Diet, and the lyrics are full of broken hearts, bad feelings, jealousy, and misunderstandings; as pretty as the surfaces may be, the emotions that boil just beneath the surface are not so calm. Of course, nice tunes about heartache are part of what power pop is all about, and though Omori's melodies are a bit too elaborate to fully fall into that category, his grand-scale pop vision deserves the attention of anyone with a taste for a good hook and the desire to do something with it. The Diet isn't a quantum leap over New Misery, but it certainly represents a step forward for Cullen Omori, both as a songwriter and a performer, and as long as his love life remains problematic, he should have a great future ahead of him.

© Mark Deming /TiVo