Avalanche

Mike Kinsella’s work over the years with his various musical endeavors has been nothing
short of foundational, from early days with Cap’n Jazz right up until recently with American
Football’s unforeseen and excellent second act. Even with his long list of contributions to
course-setting bands, Kinsella never reveals more of his internal world than he does with the
softly drawn songs of his long running solo project Owen. With new album The Avalanche,
he delivers a set of Owen songs that are the most straightforward and unguarded the
project has ever been.
The last Owen album, 2016’s The King of Whys showed up just a few months before
American Football (LP2), the first new music in over 15 years from the recently reunited
group. Kinsella took a relatively relaxed approach to his solo project in that time, playing rare
occasional shows when American Football’s rigorous touring schedule allowed. After
several busy years working within the collaborative framework of a band, Kinsella was more
than ready for the complete creative control a new Owen record offered. He reunited with
producer Sean Carey (Bon Iver, Peter Gabriel) and engineer Zach Hanson (The Tallest Man
On Earth, Waxahatchee) and decamped to snow-covered Hive Studio in Eau Claire,
Wisconsin, just far enough away from the routines and distractions of daily life to really focus
on the process. The leaps forward in production and detail that first surfaced on The King of
Whys advanced even further as The Avalanche came together. The collaborative chemistry
Kinsella, Carey and Hanson share comes into its own on these songs. The odd time
signatures and intricate structures of past Owen material are traded in for more fleshed out
arrangements and direct songwriting.
Echoes of the lo-fi bedroom balladry that defined early Owen come through on the heartcrushing
“I Should Have Known,” familiar open-tuned acoustic guitars and weary vocals
supported by glowing string arrangements. “On With The Show” is bounding and upbeat,
with a jangly instrumental standing in stark contrast to lyrics about crushing failure. KC
Dalager from Now, Now contributes guest vocals to several songs, most notably the
glacially paced album centerpiece “Mom and Dead.” Layers of glimmering pedal steel and
understated music box piano tones build into one of the album’s hardest gut-punches,
stunningly pretty instrumentation gift wrapping lines as indisputably bleak as “Wake up, I
had a dream you died.”
The Avalanche takes on a new refinement, with spacious musical landscapes making room
for devastating lyrics that return to themes of an unravelling marriage and big endings. On
previous albums, sarcasm and wry humor would dull the sting of heavier lyrics. Here there
are still traces of Kinsella’s trademark humor, but instead of offering a winking dismissal of
negative thoughts, it takes the songs to even darker places. Easily the most intense Owen
album, The Avalanche is also the most beautifully crafted. Kinsella goes deeper than ever
before, with self-reflection so painfully blunt it’s sometimes difficult to look at head on. It’s a
guided walk through one of life’s more difficult chapters, resulting in nine of the best Owen
songs ever penned and an album that’s as heartbreaking as it is magnificent.