Owen - The Falls Of Sioux

Spanning more than two decades, Mike Kinsella's (American Football, Cap'n Jazz, LIES) widely influential songwriting has steadily sharpened and evolved with each new chapter. In his solo vehicle as Owen , Kinsella’s ability to seamlessly stitch jagged emotional currents into crushingly beautiful songs has remained at the forefront.

The open-ness of the music offers even Kinsella’s weariest lyrics an almost playful counterweighting, giving new album The Falls of Sioux a new positioning that hasn’t quite appeared before now in the Owen discography. It’s like watching a difficult winter melt into a nicer-than-expected spring, with the kind of distance from bad times that makes them easier to laugh at in retrospect. 

On The Falls of Sioux, he’s unafraid to share any and all angles by which he might be viewed, but it’s different when the songs stop being about the hungover guilt and communication breakdowns of early adulthood and move into the very real disappointments and discontinuations that inevitably surface as life keeps happening. Never one to retreat, Kinsella portrays the confusion, regret, and renewal of where he’s at presently with grace, honesty, and of course some biting humour. Throughout The Falls of Sioux, the things about Owen that have changed become just as valuable as those that have remained the same.