The sound of synthesized waves opens and closes Genericana, the 13th album by Joseph O’Connell released under the Elephant Micah banner. It's not difficult to imagine O'Connell camped out on some beach with a tape recorder, collecting hours of oceanic lapping and fizzing; after all, his last album, Where In Our Woods, included a ballad inspired by migrating vultures on O'Connell's parents’ farm in Indiana. But it's no field recording. Instead, the sound was generated by "The Mutant," a modified synth unit assembled by his brother, keyboardist Matt O’Connell. Nothing is exactly what it seems on Genericana. Even the title, a quick pun dreamed up by O'Connell to replace "bro-lk" in describing "a certain variety of solo performer, who you might see in a frat-style bar...playing the hits of the day in a quasi-folk mode," takes on new, weirder life in the album's context. "Genericana" isn't a style or even a diss, rather, it's a hazy but useful term to describe the way mass culture functions as folk culture in our present moment.
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