Ox – American Lo Fi – (weewerk) records

“#1. ‘Surrender’ & ‘Miss Idaho’- Unable to choose between these two songs from the Vancouver band’s follow-up to the stunning Dust Bowl Revival, We finally gave up and picked both of them. The former is an unlikely loping country re-make of Cheap Tricks’s signature tune; the latter is a melancholy, Neil Young-ish original thats reminiscent of the sound that Jay Farrar has refined both on his own and with Son Volt, Wilco, and Uncle Tupelo. ‘Miss Idaho’ certainly holds its own with anything those two gentlemen have done in years.” – John Sakamoto, “Anti Hit List”, Toronto Star

“Touchingly organic… like Wilco’s early material or Whiskey Town before them, Ox’s live set sounds at once both timeless and unmistakably of its era. If there was ever a need to strip music down to its raw elements, Ox has the purity and grace to pull it off. And that’s easily enough to raise them high above the crowd. – Drowned In Sound (London UK)

“This is the most relaxed Ox (Mark Browning) has sounded and this is the most loose, open-ended album he’ done. It’s as if he’s comfortable and confident with who he is on record and this has allowed spontaneity and accident to creep in. Not everything works but the slinky folk-rock he’s developed is appealing.” – Vancouver Province

“Browning has returned with American Lo-Fi, a set that is even better than Dust Bowl Revival … The result is a drunken, impressively personal expose in song, one that shakes the demons in all of us. An experimentation in letting tact, and all that comes with it take a holiday, American Lo-fi is the artless counterpart for the art rocker, the soul that gives the styled haircut a good shaking every time hedonism takes control of common sense. Brooding, bacchanalian, repressively sweet, good natured and smart, Browning has once again reached the acme in Canadiana, a set that exposes everything we do not want, but desperately need to let loose in order to be free.” – Shain Shapiro, View Magazine (Hamilton), 26 October – 1 November 2006