Owen

Related Content

• The Smiths' Louder Than Bombs turns 25 years old today
  March 30, 2012
• Review: Death Cab for Cutie at Ellie Caulkins, with Magik*Magik Orchestra, 4/10/12
  April 11, 2012
• Death Cab for Cutie in Denver at Ellie Caulkins Opera House on April 10
  January 18, 2012
• Mombi
  October 6, 2011
• BLKHRTS taking West Coast by storm
  August 11, 2011

More About

• Mike Kinsella
• Morrissey (Singer)
• Joan of Arc
• Sleeping and Sleep Disorders
• Pregnancy and Childbirth

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Music Newsletter: Keep your thumb on the local music scene with music features, additional online music listings and show picks. We'll also send special ticket offers and music promotions available only to our Music Newsletter subscribers.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

Mike Kinsella must be getting tired. Since he took a detour from Joan of Arc in 1999 to begin recording his own material -- first in the group American Football, and now solo, as Owen -- the songwriter has quietly constructed a panopticon of doomed emotional scenarios that somehow involve beds or sleeping. On I Do Perceivealone, six of the eight tracks fall into this category, the most blatant being "Who Found Who's Hair in Who's Bed?" and featherweight "Bed Abuse." But as soft, hushed and fixated on nap time as it can be, the disc is far from narcoleptic. Amid all of the plush strumming and lovelorn cooing, Kinsella manages to spike his maudlin weariness with stinging anti-social commentary, paying lyrical tribute to Morrissey even as he paraphrases the Misfits. Unlike the similar-sounding Death Cab for Cutie, a band hopped up on its own bleating melodramatics, Owen's music occupies that tense, pregnant silence between between the rustle of PJs and the thunk of heads hitting pillows.