Cerulean (The Ocean Blue album)

The album was produced by Pat McCarthy and bandmembers David Schelzel and Rob Minnig.^[6] The Ocean Blue were more interested in producing an album that sounded of a piece rather than worrying about how well singles would do.^[7] The majority of the keyboard parts were played by Minnig.^[8] "The Planetarium Scene" alludes to a passage from the Book of Psalms.^[9] "Falling Through the Ice" is an instrumental.^[10]

More information Review scores, Source ...

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[1]
The Daily Illini	[11]
The Macon Telegraph	[12]
The Philadelphia Inquirer	[13]
St. Petersburg Times	[14]
Syracuse Herald-Journal	[15]
York Daily Record	[16]

Close

The St. Petersburg Times opined, "Although it may be a botched attempt at moving in a more acoustic direction, Cerulean is a complete disaster, and unravels all the promise that the Ocean Blue originally showed."^[14] The Washington Post noted that "the quartet's cocktail-lounge rhythms and its interest in colors, flowers and mutability ... suggest a strong kinship with its trans-Atlantic peers... Like the products of most of those bands, Cerulean is pleasant but a bit too wispy for its own good."^[17] Dave Eggers, in The Daily Illini, said that the lyrics "are delicate, poetic and small-scaled."^[11] The York Daily Record concluded that, "as with a lot of alternative bands these days ... the Ocean Blue [have] tapped the sound of alternative rock without tapping any of the depth or sense of experimentation that made this music just that—an alternative."^[16] The Morning Call listed Cerulean as one of the worst albums of 1991.^[18]

In 1999, the Portland Press Herald included the album on its list of the 90 "best CDs of the '90s that no one heard".^[19] In 2024, the Star Tribune noted that the music "fell in with the more mopey, lusher, prettier brand of pre-Nirvana alternative rock led by groups like the Cure, New Order, the Church and fellow Sire label mates Echo & the Bunnymen."^[20]