Mike Kinsella - Velvet hard-core

"Chicagocore: Akinsellapolothology" was the title of a city public radio show dedicated to the two brothers a few years ago. It all began with Cap’n Jazz. These are the artistic stories of Mike Kinsella, Tim Kinsella and Chicago's small-but-mighty (art)post-hardcore scene.

Cap’n Jazz

Cap’n Jazz are the first short circuit between two musical personalities, complementary and opposite: Tim's "arty" and "noise" side, and Mike's "trad" and "rock" side. Formed in 1989 on Tim's initiative, when Mike was twelve, together with bassist Sam Zurick, the (hugely talented) guitarist Victor Villarreal and, later, guitarist Davey Von Bohlen, the band settled definitively on the name Cap’n Jazz and that utterly distinctive sound within the emo-core landscape of the time.

Post-hardcore with daring noise and free jazz inserts, though only hinted at here, expressed through the non-sense lyrics bawled raucously by Tim, Mike's refined rhythmic instinct, Zurick's sustained basslines, Villarreal's tightrope-walking guitar runs and Von Bohlen's pure emo heart.

A dazzling debut in 1994, recorded by Casey Rice and released on Man With Gun with a title that is itself a manifesto of Tim's poetics: Burritos, Inspiration Point, Fork Balloon Sports, Cards in the Spokes, Automatic Biographies, Kites, Kung Fu, Trophies, Banana Peels We’ve Slipped on and Egg Shells We’ve Tippy Toed Over, better known as Shmap’n Shmazz. The opener "Little League" is a scorcher: fast, screamed, ragged, with phonetic wordplay like "Kitty kitty cat, kitty kitty cat. Thin kids get a skinny neck hex", which sounds like a nursery rhyme for a Harmony Korine film.

"Oh Messy Life", one of the band's anthems, is itself a manifesto for living, a less solipsistic reflection than other 90s emo bands offered ("Fire is motion. Work is repetition. This is my document. We are all all we’ve done"). Alongside drums-bass-guitar, other timbres make an appearance: an out-of-tune trumpet ("Basil’s Kite"), some piano parts ("Bluegrassish").

A fragmented discography – just one album, a handful of singles and compilation appearances, all skillfully gathered in 1998 by Jade Tree on the anthology Analphabetapolothology – much like the content and the individual compositions, with Tim's almost grating vocals so different from the harmony and linearity that Mike's compositions would later display.

Among the gems of the collection is a cover of A-Ha's "Take On Me", with a near-unlistenable Tim, almost believable backing vocals and a bridge with piano playing against the beat.

Inside Analphabetapolothology lies the desire to explore the "post" territory of hardcore along the path blazed by pioneers Fugazi. And, in potential, there are the seeds of what would later come from the members of Cap’n Jazz, an impressive body of projects in both quality and eclecticism: Joan of Arc, The One Up Downstairs, American Football, Promise Ring, Ghosts & Vodka, Sky Corvair, Owls, Owen, NoYes, Friend/Enemy, Vermont, Make Believe, Flashlight, Maritime.

The Cap'n Jazz experience came to an end in 1995 during an East Coast tour.

Joan of Arc/The One Up Downstairs

With the band that had ignited the talent of all its members now disbanded, in 1995 the "arty-noise" influences of Cap'n Jazz's post-hardcore mainly flowed into Joan of Arc, another of Tim's projects in which Mike took part both as drummer and guitarist.

Around the same time, Mike moved to Champaign-Urbana, also in Illinois, where he put together The One Up Downstairs, his first musical project – preceding/overlapping with American Football – for which he wrote the lyrics and provided vocals on the self-titled EP.

Three songs – recently reissued by "local heroes" Polyvinyl – are enough to show the direction his work wanted to take, especially compared to his brother's, one defined by greater slowness and less schizophrenia, by melody and roundness of sound as much as by intimacy and emotion, recalling more the atmospheres of early Karate than of early Joan of Arc (a contemporary band).

And "Champagne" is the heart of this poetics. These are the dress rehearsals for what would soon become a milestone of emo: the self-titled debut by American Football.

After a handful of 7"s, the first two Joan of Arc albums came out, A Portable Model Of (1997) and How Memory Works (1998), released – as would often be the case – in quick succession, the result of Tim's "hemorrhagic" songwriting and the collaboration of many musicians.

Unlike the emotionally-driven The One Up Downstairs, Joan of Arc work in a more intellectual way on the idea of "post" (hardcore and rock), developing each album on a conceptual level and weaving acoustic, electronic and electric sounds into more or less unusual forms, with a will to experiment with and deconstruct the rock and folk song in its most traditionally pop shape.

In just a few years, Joan of Arc thus freed themselves from the by-then cumbersome and outdated "emo" label that had always been attached to their music, evolving and shifting into an artistic path that, still in 2013, finds them in full health.

Moreover, from these early works by Joan of Arc and The One Up Downstairs one can already gauge the different personalities and styles of the Kinsella brothers just from the choice of artwork and album titles for their respective projects (in Joan of Arc, in fact, there is a clearer continuity with Cap'n Jazz).

American Football

American Football are not only one of those bands that, despite having released just one LP and played little more than a handful of shows, hold a major cult status, but they are also Mike's first, tentative attempt to discover himself as a songwriter and to define his untrained yet sweetly familiar voice.

Gradually gestated out of a brief project called The One Up Downstairs, American Football grew quietly until they developed an incredible chemistry, the one that essentially holds the album together and creates an almost unique atmosphere, one built—unlike harder emo's agony of instruments—from the gentle attuning of emotion and melancholy found in American Football's music.

Songs shaped and molded until they become a barely rippling stream of arpeggios, beneath whose surface, however, countless imperceptible, swirling turbulences stir, impulsively colored by the almost random intrusions of Kinsella's voice, the last of the instruments to be composed and arranged and thus inserted almost casually, with relatively little regard for melody – so much so that, on some tracks, its place is taken by a trumpet ("The One With The Wurlitzer", "The Summer Ends").

Songs with a free, jazz-like spirit, held back and stretched out by constant tempo changes, revealing a technical mastery that is concealed and shaped around an emotional trajectory in which naturalness is the true blueprint.

That's why there is the liberating, contemplative stillness of the coda of "Honestly?", and why "I'll See You When We're Both Not So Emotional" gives this feeling of unease, of something to shake off, and at the same time of serene acceptance.

This is where American Football differ from more classic emo, which expresses an altered interior state – American Football is instead a later reflection, an evolution towards that probing of interpersonal relationships typical of post-2000s singer-songwriting, which is often also tied, through the musical background of its protagonists, to emo (its poetics, its way of expressing itself, its themes).

American Football would thus break up a year after releasing their first and only LP: but Mike Kinsella is ready to carry on that legacy, even without a band.

Owls

2000 is the year Owls were formed, essentially Cap'n Jazz without Von Bohlen – by then relocated to Wisconsin and fully committed to Promise Ring and Vermont – and they represent that band's grown-up version. Recorded in just five days by Steve Albini and released as the only work under the Owls name by Jade Tree, "Owls" (2001) is steeped in the artistic experiences of Joan of Arc and Ghosts & Vodka, more so than American Football and Sky Corvair (the band Tim formed with Bob Nanna of Braid).

Tim's lyrics exemplify an artistic maturity that has been reached, just as much as Mike's rich, intricate drumming, Villarreal's refined finger-picking, and Zurick's elaborate basslines, a cohesive and vital connecting thread as bassist (Cap'n Jazz, Joan of Arc) and guitarist (Ghosts & Vodka) across all the experiences linking the members of the band.

Just as "What Whorse You Wrote Id On" introduces a kind of "beat situationism" with the same phrase repeated over and over against the other lines like a mantra ("Anything I can mistake in the dark for being what I'm looking for is good enough for me"), "I Want the Quiet Moments of a Party Girl" is equally a love song sui generis ("I'm sorry I want to die. Do you still want to die? Let's get it on. Let's drive to Alaska. Let's drive to Alaska. Let's drive to Alaska. It really is a lonely life leaving and ignoring messages. All the necklacing").

"I Want the Blidingly Cute to Confide in Me" is the track that best embodies the spirit of The Owls, that of a great jam session played in the dead of night, where emo is forgotten in order to move beyond it. Despite this inherent complexity, The Owls turns out to be more accessible on first listen than the early Joan of Arc records.

The cover art is another work of art in itself: "Self-portraits by Owls", a collage of hands, arms, mouths, noses and hair that forms a creature with the vague likeness of an owl. In 2002 the band breaks up, following the fate of other earlier projects, but shortly after come the first two splendid Owen records (Owen, from 2001, and No Good For No One Now, from 2002), Mike's solo project, as well as one of Joan of Arc's best albums, the intimate So Much Staying Alive And Lovelessness (2003).

Owen

Despite being one of the first to turn his bedroom into a recording studio, playing and producing his own music entirely by himself, Mike remains to this day a unique singer-songwriter, inimitable and unmatched, within the vast singer-songwriter landscape of the past dozen years or so. Having left American Football, he spends his money with Polyvinyl on home-recording software instead of hiring session musicians or booking studio time – a complete shift in perspective.

What's left is him and his acoustic guitar, but it's immediately clear that this isn't some post-adolescent infatuation with tradition, but a deeply personal reworking of his relationship with the instrument and with self-sufficient composition. In 2001 comes Owen, the first release under this almost clinical yet familiar moniker, much like American Football's had undoubtedly been.

Here too, the songs seem to form like a natural exhalation, with lyrics layered over a constant acoustic shiver like gentle impressions, in a peaceful, domestic, Kozelek-esque vein ("Dead Men Don't Lie"). Honest to a degree that could almost be called "embarrassing", given how it never resorts to literary subterfuge, Owen's music is conceived within the fleeting yet ever-present bubble of domestic solitude, and bears its marks in its placid confessions, in its pale glow.

In jest, Kinsella has said he imagines Owen's songs sung by Bilinda Butcher of My Bloody Valentine, picturing his music as a dialogue with the feminine part of himself, or perhaps thinking of the dreamlike inflections of his songs (the synthetic expanses of "Think About It", the use of vibraphone, keyboards and female samples, precisely).

But above all, what one can already appreciate are the musical instincts of Mike the songwriter: the sudden, moody acoustic reverberations of "Declaration Of Incompetence", the genuine voice given to his own instrument ("Accidentally"), the grace imprinted on his songs ("Places To Go").

The bond with the scene that gave birth to Kinsella is obvious and strong – for better or worse, there's nothing calculated about Owen's lyrics, only subconscious impressions and the sum of everyday relationships. It's no coincidence that Owen's first tour is in support of Rainer Maria in clubs, rather than in some trendy organic pub.

Things start to evolve on the following No Good For No One Now, in which the songs follow a more markedly narrative development, and the hoard of gear in the bedroom-studio grows. The songs stretch out: you can feel that the singer-songwriter voice-and-guitar guise is becoming too tight a fit for Kinsella, and so the songs discover new instruments too.

A few brief piano notes in the nocturnal encounter of "Poor Souls", the synthetic unfolding of the never-ending finale of "Take Care Of Yourself", more frequent electric incursions ("Everyone Feels Like You").

On this second record, rather than settling into an already recognizable register and expressiveness, Mike shows an organic evolution toward a more defined composure, in some cases almost refined (the lovely "The Ghost Of What Should've Been", the less haphazard melody of "Nobody's Nothing").

Born out of a collaboration with his cousin Nate, the third album, I Do Perceive, finds Mike coming to terms with the idea of making Owen a less homemade, less independent project, and working at least partly in a proper studio. The result is a record in which Kinsella gets the measure of these new possibilities, making the sound even more compact, and recording one of the tracks most reminiscent of American Football, "That Tattoo Isn't Funny Anymore".

Aside from that, it's not the American songwriter's most inspired record: rather ordinary in its choices (the electric peaks of the catatonic "Lights Out", the crystalline arpeggios of "Playing Possum For A Peek") and overlong in the way the songs develop ("Bed Abuse" above all).

At the same time, I Do Perceive shows Mike's growing familiarity with pop, with tracks of straightforward folk-pop like "She's A Thief", and, more generally, songwriting that's less and less impressionistic.

But it's the decision to leave, at least in part, his parents' house for an actual recording studio that really gets the project off the ground, once again aided by cousin Nate and by Brian Deck (Iron And Wine). At Home With Owen comes out in 2006 and represents an incredible flowering of Kinsella's music, an emotional amplification full of tiny musical insights.

A more pronounced percussive presence provides the solid foundation, the heartbeat over which to layer the electric tremors that stir the hushed landscapes Mike conjures up ("Windows And Doorways"): the arrangements and their execution are truly a sensational one-off in the singer-songwriter world of the new millennium.

Tireless and never quite the same twice ("Bags Of Bones"), Kinsella's arpeggios sketch the usual family stories of everyday melancholy, with the added weapon of being able to fully express a great musical taste (the piano and violin parts that frame the nostalgic, bittersweet picture of "One Of These Days", the background tones of the superb "Bad News", one of the manifestos of Owen's heart-on-sleeve poetics).

What's revealed is a classic pop that will never truly be "classic", owing to the erudite stamp of the guitar compositions (the work of a true weaver of music, with the seven minutes and searing solo of "Bird In Hand") and the brutal honesty of its lyrics: decisive proof comes from one of Owen's most famous songs, "The Sad Waltzes Of Pietro Crespi" (a quote from "Cent'anni di solitudine"), a classic ballad with moving orchestral touches and, at the same time, an utterly recognizable Mike motif, almost allergic to choruses, to the very concept of a melodic line. And so there's a cover of "Femme Fatale", likewise set in a pleasant emotional torpor: "Sometimes I forget, while writing, that I could just repeat a chorus. 'Femme Fatale' is a very simple song and that's what drew me to it".

On New Leaves (2009) the path of progressive enrichment in Owen's music is confirmed and solidified, even though it's a transitional record, one in which the insights of At Home With Owen seem to settle into Kinsella's own personal vision of pop. New Leaves is thus a record in which the new choices seem more to flatten and normalize the emotional content of the songs (the "flute effect", the accordion of "Curtain Call") rather than heighten it - or, at least, to show its more accommodating (and sincere, as on the single "Good Friends With Bad Habits") face. Despite a few more restless exceptions, like the electric jolts of "The Only Child Of Aergia".

New Leaves is the settled, mature record of a Kinsella who has put down roots (domesticated, to put it plainly), married with a daughter. That doesn't stop him from building an album that's in a sense impeccable. But certainly lacking the overflowing emotion of its predecessor.

The inspiration of At Home With Owen is instead recaptured on Ghost Town (2011), a record marked by the death of his father, which in the record's shifting mood seems to intertwine with the birth of his daughter (directly present here in the pre-Raphaelite, bucolic "O Evelyn..."). A combination of events that finds its correspondence in the rediscovered, awestruck glow of Owen's music, which picks up both the solitary guitar work of his early days and the gentle interjections of his best record (without, however, overdoing the instrumentation), composing a vision of harsh but wise acceptance.

This already seems to emerge from the opening track, "Too Many Moons", with its faint string moans, its oddly classicizing arpeggios, but also from songs furrowed by an almost liberating act of faith ("I Believe") or love ("No Place Like Home", with math-rock moments and a great closing solo), expressed in one of the most muscular tirades of Owen's career.

Family is certainly the existential pivot of this Owen "ghost town", which stretches from a transfiguration-anthology of motherhood (the excellent "Mother's Milk Breath") to the relationship with his late father ("You know I'm still pissed after a life tempestuous/ Unless you can rise from the dead, I'll die like this", Mike sings on "No Language").

Ghosts, presences whose still-unresolved existence hovers around Kinsella's life and fill the album's pages, stirring its waters in unexpected but controlled movements, even when everything seems to grate in a jolt that seems to embrace both the living and the dead (the distortion of the final solo in "Everyone Is Asleep In This House But Me").

Within these overflowing feelings, this kind of emotional reckoning, Owen steadily crosses dream-like routes and sudden gathering storm clouds; emblematic of this wavering, changeable weather of the record is "I Believe", which opens in the form of a mantra and ignites into an electric storm right in its middle.

Ghost Town is, in short, the record that eases a little the fears of those who feared that Kinsella's artistic life would follow the progressive settling of his personal trajectory: the answer lies in the novelistic unfolding, worthy of a great songwriter, of the album's songs ("No Language"), always tending toward a climax that only inspiration can reach.

L’Ami Du Peuple (2013) – the name of a newspaper founded by Marat during the French Revolution – confirms Kinsella's punctual output, a sign of the existential stability the American singer-songwriter has achieved, having settled into a decidedly regular rhythm since becoming a homebody, as his first work.

Not that surprises are to be expected from Owen – even the much-touted and feared rock turn is nothing more than a natural continuation of the electric impulses of Ghost Town – but it's undeniably tangible, in this latest addition to an already substantial discography, a creative status more akin to a craftsman than an artist.

Over the course of his career, Kinsella first mastered the tools of the singer-songwriter, then, starting with At Home With Owen, those of the fully-rounded composer. Judging by L’Ami Du Peuple, the room where he shuts himself away to write, the recording studio, has become a workshop, virtually indistinguishable from domestic space.

And so, perhaps for the first time since the start of his career, Owen's music sounds a bit emptier, a polite collection, an embroidery of great skill but also somewhat formulaic, lacking the poignant poetry of At Home With Owen and the bursting outbursts of Ghost Town.

Both the more nostalgic, band-like impulses are confirmed (perhaps the best moments, with "A Fever" and "Bad Blood"), but so is an increasingly sharp dichotomy with the acoustic tracks reminiscent of his early days ("Coffin Companions", "I Got High").

L’Ami Du Peuple thus becomes a branded product, with just the right dose of novelty (a few electric guitar solos, unheard of) but also a solid, recognizable expressive catalogue. Brand Owen, a sure thing.

Perhaps it's the certification of an artistic midlife reached, The King Of Whys, Owen's eighth album. The record, starting with its title, seems to want to become the epitome of Kinsella's career, as he accepts for the first time, without much upheaval, the collaboration of someone like S. Carey, who organized the recording of the album in the now-legendary Eau Claire studio of former bandmate Justin Vernon.

The fragile, elusive traits of Mike's songwriting, left exposed in his earlier work, are here amplified by a broader, more "normal" framework, as in the cinematic rolling of "Lovers Come And Go", with clearly greater attention paid to the characterization of the songs, counterbalanced by a general sense of superfluousness, since the arrangements draw on a rather generic indie landscape that could just as easily be found on a new Bon Iver album, precisely, or by The National.

For instance, the strings (plucked or otherwise) on "Lost" feel like an ill-fitting embellishment for Owen's music, which can generally be accused of anything except expressive mannerism.

In this context, the songs on The King Of Whys largely fall within Kinsella's standard (still a high one), though he can still deliver a few gems, like the construction of "Empty Bottle".

After intense touring with American Football, Kinsella picks the more intimate, personal Owen project back up and moves to the snowy quiet of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, to record The Avalanche with producer Sean Carey (Bon Iver, Peter Gabriel) and sound engineer Zach Hanson (The Tallest Man On Earth, Waxahatchee).

"A New Muse" opens with big strums and that typical cyclical, periodically stumbling arpeggiation that has always characterized Owen's songwriting – which we find again later in "Headphoned" – rounded out by refrains and transitions between sections in the more fully realized, sophisticated songs. At the heart of the record sit Kinsella's hermetic, bitter lyrics, about relationships falling apart and endings already written, while the songs are enriched with many small, precious arrangement details: blooming strings, gently blown brass, caressing piano notes and light harmonies – featuring the female voice of KC Dalager of Now, Now – that accompany Mike's tales of adulthood, resetting the direction of the Owen project after the gamble of "The King of Whys" (Polyvinyl, 2016) and "L’Ami Du Peuple" (Polyvinyl, 2013).

The gorgeous lyricism of “Dead for Days”, one of the album's most poetic and fully realized tracks, sums up this record: a song à-la Owen where strings, horns and electronics accompany the music softly, like a single body moving in harmony with Kinsella's fingerpicking and his increasingly confident, present voice. “On With the Show” draws you into a dance led by the bass and framed by strings, while the hazy piano intro of “The Contours” carries you into the deeply American landscapes of a David Gordon Green film, where pedal steel, strings and piano build a choral counterpoint to Kinsella's voice as he admits to being in therapy.

The sweetness of “Wanting and Willing”, Owen-esque with a faint echo of Bon Iver, leads us to the magical closer “I Go, Ego”, which seems to complete the circle opened by the debut “Owen”, retracing those rarefied, undefined atmospheres, and which also runs through the maturity of “At Home with Owen” (Polyvinyl, 2006), in which you can read, between the lines, a reference to the song “One of These Days”. It's a closing track full of awareness, but with the bittersweet flavor of a farewell.

Their/They’re/There

Several years go by with Owen and Joan of Arc, appearances on various compilations – including “The Association of Utopian Hologram Swallowers” (2005, with Joan of Arc, Owen, Love of Everything, Make Believe, People's Dick) and “Present Guitar Duets” (2006, a collection of duets credited to Joan of Arc) – the American reunion of Cap'n Jazz (2010) and the release of the unusual New Leaves (2011).

Then Mike too returns to rock. Perhaps fatherhood entering his life, sublimated in the release of “O, Evelyn” on 7” (2011), sparked the urge to get into the studio and play drums in a power trio.

Mike forms T/T/T in Chicago with singer and bassist Evan Thomas Weiss (Into It. Over It) and guitarist Matthew Frank (Loose Lips Sink Ships), putting out a self-titled six-song EP just released on Polyvinyl, available to stream on the label's website and in carefully produced green (first pressing) and red (second pressing) vinyl.

On first listen, the strangest thing about the EP is that it's rock, in the traditional sense of the word, and therefore unusual compared to Mike's previous bands — though over the years he's never hidden his love of American rock (even covering “Jump” by Van Halen, playing drums on it, no less). Maybe he'd always wanted a band like this, if only to have more fun.

The imprint of Weiss's solo project Into It. Over It is undeniably strong, and his world seems to take precedence over that of the other two musicians. But the combination of Weiss's punk-rock/alternative voice and bass, Frank's phrasing (very much in the “Villarreal” style) and Mike's drumming sometimes feels almost jarring, at least for anyone used to his other musical projects.

At times you seem to be hearing a band like Everclear (“Fit your life into a grid”) or the poppier side of Sugar Ray (“Their/They're/Therapy”), at others echoes of Sublime-style vocals pop up over Ghosts & Vodka-esque phrasing (“Confession speech writer”). Taken together it has a different flavor — more than unusual, downright strange.

Meanwhile, still on the Polyvinyl website, by now the label and store for nearly all the artists mentioned, you can pre-order Joan of Arc's “Testimonium songs” on magenta vinyl, out in early August. Same story, another chapter.

Owls – “Two”

2014 marks the return of Owls, essentially Cap'n Jazz without Von Bohlen, who thirteen years after their massive self-titled debut come back in 2014 with Two, released on Polyvinyl Records with another cover that's bizarre to say the least (one Noel Gallagher definitely shouldn't see).

It's the album's own press release that reveals this Two had a complicated gestation (“Owls have a new record. It didn't come fast and it didn't come easy.”), marked by false starts, various misunderstandings and scheduling difficulties for rehearsals and recording sessions involving Kinsella and co., who are constantly juggling multiple commitments and absorbed in their respective musical projects. Nothing like the five days it took to make the debut, which, among other things, saw none other than Steve Albini stepping in as producer.

The distorted guitars at the opening still preserve intact the bittersweet flavor of American alt-rock from the '80s and '90s (the raw, genuine kind made by Sonic Youth, Pavement and Pixies), and they introduce Tim Kinsella's unmistakable fragmented, eccentric vocal timbre, let loose over the hypnotic passages bordering on noise of the single “I'm Surprised…” and over echoes of Seattle's glory days in “The Lion…”.

Moving from the stylistic exercise of “This Must Be How…” to the post-rock-tinged free jazz of “Ancient Stars See…”, we arrive at the second half of the record, which proves darker and winks at the collective's post-hardcore and emo-core beginnings. The nearly six minutes of “It Collects Itself…” are a perfect summary of the Owls brand: Mike's clean, sharp drumming merges with Zurick's winding bass lines and underpins Villarreal's elegant picking, while Tim's deranged, raucous screams almost clash with the band's excellent jam-session-style instrumental harmony. And that's where the record's real added value shows itself, able to bring out and perfectly balance each musician's personality, in a crossover of genres and ideas that still manages to surprise.

More than a decade on, Owls prove that little or nothing has been lost in the mists of time. Two is a great record that smells of bygone eras and, while bearing the marks of its individual members' freewheeling musical careers, stays fundamentally consistent with the self-titled 2001 album, while adding a fuller sound and coming across as more direct and cohesive. There's no telling whether we'll have to wait another decade for a new chapter from the Chicago “owls”; for now, we're more than happy to settle for this.

LIES

The debut album by the Chicago duo formed by cousins Mike and Nate Kinsella, released via local label Polyvinyl, seems to pick up where the songwriting of Owen albums left off — Mike's solo project, to which Nate had contributed — except that the space once filled by guitar textures is now largely taken up by piano and strings synthesizers, conceptually recalling the parallel between the Death Cab For Cutie operation and Postal Service.

Once again centered on everyday themes (friendship, relationships, family), it breaks free from the melancholy of Owen's songs, opening up — especially in the vocal melodies and arrangements — to a liveliness and a richer tonal palette, with sax solos ("Echoes"), female choruses ("Corbeau") and pizzicato strings ("Merely"). Radiant electronic intros ("Resurrection"), synthpop passages with raw guitars à la Depeche Mode ("Camera Chimera"), breezy indietronica verses ("Summer Somwhere") and rarefied ballads ("No Shame") with sweet guitar phrasing à la Cure ("Rouge Vermouth") dot almost an hour of music that's pleasant but not memorable, so finely chiseled in sound that it loses sight of the song's overall shape.

Maria Teresa Soldani: Cap’n Jazz, Joan Of Arc, LIES, Owls, Their/They’re/There, Owen “The Avalanche”

Lorenzo Righetto: American Football, Owen

Lorenzo Bruno: Owls “Two”

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