AMG Review of At Home with Owen

Erik Hage
All Music Guide

Owen is Mike Kinsella, who is associated with such Chicago indie rock phenoms as American Football, Cap'n Jazz, and Joan of Arc. On his own, he creates dreamy, new-millennium bedroom folk dotted with all kinds of modernistic and ancient traces, such as loops, cello, piano, and sparse percussion. Kinsella is the sole auteur here, whipping up an album that sometimes leans toward such ruminative, creative songwriters as Mark Kozelek and Elliott Smith. Kinsella's pretty dirges don't come off as lo-fi, though; in fact, there is a surprising depth of layered textures here, in which acoustic guitar and other ephemera provide an expansive bed for Kinsella's often homely yet pleasing hush of a voice. The instrumentation in "One of These Days" has a bucolic richness, fleshed out with spare piano plunkings and cello, while the excellent "Sad Waltzes of Pietro Crespi" pins nimble acoustic guitar runs against Kinsella's plaintive musings on love. At Home with Owen has a contemplative, Sunday morning feel to it; it is a strong effort in which themes of yearning and wishful thinking pass dreamily across lovely musical textures, like rain on a windshield.