Ox - Stolen Bike

Artist: Ox

Song: Stolen Bike

Album: Dust Bowl Revival (2003)

Music

From the long, hard running American interstate comes the latest incarnation of alt-country anti-hero Mark Browning. With disdain for the singer-songwriter stereotype and a spirit of collaboration, the collective 'OX', has become Browning's new voice for the deconstructed pop song and the anthem of the musically disenfranchised. The concept is plain, reflect the hardness of this land, the spirit of the folks living on it, and blow it out like diesel exhaust. After all, it's only rock & roll. The debut OX: DUST BOWL REVIVAL (to be released December, 2002) is a collection of studio weary fragments, fragile masterpieces, sonic accidents; a candid album in the truest sense. Recorded live to analog tape and spliced cassette demo recordings made across the mid-west, DUST BOWL REVIVAL is literally, a record of a record; a behind the scenes look at recording an album. Production, exposed; a musical affirmation that the air in the room is part of the song, that space is part of the song, that the musical scaffolds of count-ins and tube-amp hum are part of the song... that the song, is only a part of the song.

"Headlining Vancouver songman OX plies a sensitive but scuffed, delicate but twisted variant on the cracked alt-country thing. On the evidence of a forthcoming album, 'DUST BOWL REVIVAL' he is a significant talent." Ross
Fortune, TIME OUT, LONDON UK

Apparently, Ox really enjoyed that song and its chord progression, since they wrote new words for it and created "Stolen Bike", which comes a few songs later. Maybe Kanye West, Jay-Z, or the Beatles are allowed to refer to other songs they wrote, and preferably songs from prior albums, but Ox has not earned that right. It is appalling that they either expect the audience to not notice that "Stolen Bike" is the same as "Stolen Car" -- just sped up -- or worse but more probable, that they do expect the audience to notice, and to find it terribly clever or interesting. That said, with its robust drum beat and its foot-tapping chorus, the song is easier to digest than "Stolen Car", so maybe the solution would have been to get rid of the first song.