Pennsylvania autumn is a great season. By 1996 I’d retuned to Lancaster, PA from Virginia and that first fall was lovely. I made a lot of new friends who have stuck with me ever since, and it’s the point in time where my musical interested broadened beyond punk rock.
I’d met a musician who had introduced me to a new form of music: emo. I remember him attributing the “emotional” aspect of the music to the tonality: the disparate, calculated rhythms mimicked the emotional rollercoaster of life. In time, I would find that the emotional aspect was regarding the lyrical content, which was much more introspective and sensitive than the hardcore movement at large.
My friends back home in Richmond also encountered this new movement that year. Bands like Get Up Kids, The Promise Ring, Texas is the Reason, Mineral, Braid… the list could go on and on. One of the stalwarts of the mid-90’s scene was Cap’n Jazz. They would release disparate singles, EPs and splits but never a full length album until after they broke up, and Jade Tree Records released an anthology of their work. That band included second wave emo legends Davey von Bohlen (who would go on to front The Promise Ring) and was started by Mike and Tim Kinsella, who would later form American Football.
Later in the 90’s, Mike Kinsella departed from his typical Midwestern style (look it up…) and released a solo project he called Owen. These tracks lived on WXJM, the college station from James Madison University that soundtracked my early aughts. American Football became one of my favorite bands, and I liked Owen but not enough to keep up with the project.
Here we are, in 2024, a quarter century from them bygone emo 90’s. Mike has released another Owen project, and I can’t look away.
The Falls of Sioux contain many of Kinsella’s trademarks: softly arpeggiating guitar lines, unique interpretations of time signatures, and his soft voice, so often sounding like a plea. “When I get to Sioux Falls, there’s going to be a reckoning…” he sings in the opener “A Reckoning”, coming out like a whispered threat rather than the usual bravado declaration. It’s his withdrawn voice that sends this line like a stinger, punctuated by a bell that sounds like something from “Enter Sandman”.
The opening three tracks are each filled with incredible moments. The single word chorus of “Beaucoup” with the guitar following the modulation. It sounds like Tim and guest KC Dalager (of the band Now, Now) seem to have a tremolo bar on their voice, but their doing it all on their own. It’s “Hit and Run” that stands out the strongest.
This track features my favorite lyric on the album: “Do as I mumble/Not as I stumble”. Not to mention the finest use of a pedal steel this side of Daniel Lanois (it’s not just for country music, folks). Ben Lester does a fine job of bending accents to accompany the acoustic. Diamond guitar chords swell with reverb behind the fingerstyle acoustic. This softy of a song moves eloquently, eventually folding in gorgeous accents cello and lilting piano.
Honestly, “Hit and Run” sums up what I love about this record: The familiar voice from American Football backs himself with a congregation of organic instruments, running his typical arpeggiating guitar lines on an acoustic and stead of his electric. The results are astounding enough to make me want to write this review.
A lot of these songs clock in at well over four minutes, and three of them over five. This allows Kinsella to create a sort of opus within each tune, taking us on journeys in soft ingenuity. His inclusion of brother Tim on the drums is a genius inclusion, here. Tim’s drums are as recognizable as Mike’s voice and his broad reaching creativity with the sticks elevates these songs. Listen for them on the verses of “Cursed ID”.
A beautiful departure from his typical sound is Mount Cleverest, with its title harkening back to the snarky titles of 90’s emo songs. Here, Tim strums a swampy chord progression and Mike answers with a beat that grooves more than he normally does. Fuzzy guitar lingers and bends in the background while synth and tape echo create the noisescape behind it all. Again, Tim’s gentle vocals stand out amongst this chaos. It’s a beautiful addition and clears the palate.
The production is typically clean. This isn’t the 90’s after all, and Tim has access to the varied host of spotless production everyone else does. The acoustic guitars are bright and clear, vocals given the same treatment. In fact, this production is so clean is sparkles and shimmers with the light of its songs.
4/5
Click to buy Owen: The Falls of Sioux from Bandcamp