76/100
Written by: Derek Walker

It’s been three years, one marriage, one childbirth and a hell of a lot of shows since Mike Kinsella’s last album under the Owen label, meaning there is no excuse for this to not be good. Or at least different. And his fifth record, \’93New Leaves,\’94 is effective in satisfying both those criteria \’96 but to an extent.

There’s no real backstory needed on Kinsella, his ideologies or his influences. In interviews he is humble, kind and jokey. On stage he is more or less the same. But somewhere, sometime, somehow, between 2006′s \’93At Home With Owen\’94 and now, something jibed with him, be it the wife, the kid, the long nights or the early mornings with each, or with neither. His attitude has changed, certainly, as it should with age. But was anyone honestly expecting the scrawny 20something from American Football to finally, well, grow up? As \’93New Leaves\’94 shows, growing up is hard to do, especially when that entails seemingly growing out of what you once enjoyed doing.
Gone are the days of longing for \’93Katie\’94 or \’93Sarah\’94 \’96 sort of. Replacing the feelings of longing for lost lovers are the feelings of guilt, shame, worry and apathy unavoidable after a certain age. Individually, on a conceptual level, the songs click, but also lack the flow of the previous records. This is an unfortunate trend eating away at each subsequent Owen release. As time passes, as do Kinsella’s moods and mind-sets \’96 but what about his ability to string together a handful of continuity-minded songs? Nobody expected the new record to maintain the tight, at times ridiculous consistency of his 2001 self-titled debut, but there is something off about these 10 songs. Even \’93At Home,\’94 which itself felt disjointed at times, gelled better. And that’s the enjoyable part of anything Kinsella produces, not just under the Owen moniker: how well the songs work with one another. Often, the songs on \’93New Leaves\’94 almost go out of their way to work against one another instead of with, which becomes a distraction through the first few listens.\’a0

Lyrically, he’s still got it, even with hard-to-stomach lines like \’93I’m shitting blood, I’m puking piss/ I’m sweating bile and awkwardness/It’s a young man’s game/And about time I quit.\’94 As amusing as it is to imagine a grown man exiting stomach gunk from his pores, the weight of his words are neither lost nor found this time around. Take \’93Brown Hair in a Bird’s Nest\’94 as a foremost example. Here, he waxes on the importance of his mother’s cooking. Or something to that effect. \’93I swear on my mother’s gravy that I didn’t lie to you/I just didn’t tell the truth.\’94 It’s a cute line and a nice tip of the cap to Donna Kinsella \’96 whose home Mike used to record most of his earlier records \’96 but it feels childish and out of place. Or maybe I am just growing old myself. That seems to be the theme this time around.\’a0

\’93Curtain Call,\’94 the album’s closer, on the other hand, hits especially hard as it does its best to render the Owen brand useless. Citing lethargy and a bemused wonderment toward live performance, Kinsella seems to call himself out, asking the question his faithful have been asking for years: Does anybody even care anymore?\’a0

Conceptually, \’93New Leaves\’94 marks new territory for Kinsella, who seems torn between writing the sweet, if nostalgic love song he’s written a hundred times before, and calling out his critic. And as the listener would eventually find out, the worst critic is one’s self. Understandably defiant, this is a different Owen than the \’93idiots in the back\’94 have come to expect \’96 ripe as ever, but different, thematically. Different doesn’t always mean better, but that’s not to say the effort isn’t appreciated or accepted.