As I was holed up in my office trying to complete my assignments, exhaustion was enveloping me and I nearly succumbed to the tempting idea of sleep. Yet I powered through my work, using tactics I developed throughout my high-school career to keep my eyes open.

In order to complete my work, music is a necessity. While classical music is clinically proven to improve learning during study periods, the relaxing tone would have tucked me in bed quicker than I could run up the stairs and do it myself. Instead, I turned to the new release, A Moment Apart, by ODESZA to use as background music for the night.

Being completely honest, the tracks themselves are perfect examples of mediocrity. While no song is bad in nature, there is nothing special about any of them. Generally speaking, the album is very repetitive; all the songs have similar formats of a gradually expanding beat with minimal lyrical input. Speaking of which, few songs actually contain lyrics, which normally I would find horrifying. However, for this specific occasion, the album had the perfect blend of melody and lyrical aspects.

After stumbling upon the album for the first time, I simply played the first track and let the album play through in entirety while I worked. The songs all flowed together like converging streams to a river. While this made focusing on my assignments a much easier task, it proved that there’s nothing noteworthy enough on this album to grab my attention.

While I may not seek songs featured on A Moment Apart throughout my day-to-day life, all tracks provide perfect background noise when silence cannot be tolerated. Going as far as recommending the album is not something I would do, simply because the mediocrity of all the songs still exists, even if they perfectly fit the requirements for my situation.

That being said, there are a few songs found on the album that have a heavier presence of lyrics. For example, “Falls,” featuring Sasha Sloan clearly had lyrics as the primary focus in the song, and the beat finally taking a turn in the background. However, this background beat was so similar to others seen on the album that when listening in entirety, the song is still lost in the ever-so-similar pattern of each track.

Overall, A Moment Apart perfectly exemplifies normality with all sixteen tracks following the same general pattern. While normally monotonous and bothersome, when looking for more entertaining background music than Bach or Mozart, this album holds the perfect track list. The average blend of songs somehow created the perfect solution for my situation, allowing me to appreciate the album and keep my eyes open all at the same time.