Review: Owen's New Leaves

Mike Kinsella could give Elliott Smith a run for his money. The middle Kinsella brother's four Owen albums are beautiful if terribly sad solo works, dwelling on relationship failures. They are the one-artist soundtrack for the broken hearted.

And now, on his fifth album and first in three years, Kinsella is focusing on something new. New Leaves is, just as the title says, a new leaf for the singer/songwriter. More sonic in production, Kinsella's is dealing with the same melancholy relationship songs. But here, he shows signs of moving on, forward-looking in his approach. On the titular opener, he sings, "I'm tired of painting over the past." Indeed, this album is forward looking.

But the album is more than thematically different. Much as the Kinsella brothers various projects have barely sounded alike (OK, American Football sounds kind like Owen, but they're both Mike Kinsella solo), New Leaves stands apart from earlier Owen albums. Working with the likes of Tim Iseler (whose resume boasts Wilco credits), Brian Deck (mid-Modest Mouse, the past two Iron & Wine albums), Graeme Gibson (Califone, Joan of Arc) and brother Nate, Owen's latest sounds more collaborative. Less a man working it out alone and more a cohesive project.

The sound is fleshed out and the instrumentation heavier. Take "Ugly on the Inside." The less-than-three-minute track swells into one of the most upbeat things I've heard from Kinsella solo yet, approaching a driving rhythm, it's almost exuberant. Sure, Kinsella is singing things like, "And your complexion/I'm sorry but it’s the truth/You look like the g--damn living dead." But contextualized against his earlier work, this full bodied sound is a major development.

New Leaves is a welcome entry in the Owen catalog. Not to discredit At Home With Owen, but had he released one more album like that, Kinsella might have started sounding stale (at least with Owen). This album doesn't make us reconsider or forget "everything we once knew" about Kinsella's solo work, but it is his most revolutionary, mature and, dare I say, best so far.