reax music magazine :: music + culture » Reviews » Lake - Oh, The Places We'll Go

As a Natural Light-drinking, Marshall stack-loving, non-Calvin Johnson-worshipping man, I'm generally satisfied to dismiss childlike pop stuff like this as overly cutesy, twee and self-aware. But, damn their cutesy, twee, childlike and poppy hides, the men and women of Olympia, Washington's Lake manage to give off a sense of earnest enjoyment that's just impossible to resist. Yeah, it's all very featherlight and sunny and given to kitschy touches like rumba rhythms and harmony horn lines, but the songs are great and, perhaps more importantly, there's no sense of the hey-look-we're-adults-pretending-to-be-children smugness that has ruined so many similar yet less confidently unselfconscious projects. Oh, The Places We'll Go isn't for kids, or for adults who like it when other adults make stuff for kids; it's just innocent music for everybody, and that makes all the difference. - Colin Kincaid