![\"owen-king-of-whys_opt\"](\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/owen-king-of-whys_opt.jpg?fit=300%2C300\")
Cap\u2019n Jazz was the band that eventually spawned late 90s\/early 00s Chicago emo acts like Joan of Arc, Promise Ring, American Football, Owls, Ghosts and Vodka, and last but not least, Owen. While each one of those bands had its own unique style, Owen\u2019s was by far the most melodramatic, heart-on-sleeve, and sincere (read: devoid of irony and self-consciousness).<\/p>\n
Owen is the solo project of Cap\u2019n Jazz drummer Mike Kinsella. Owen started as a sort of more spacious, meandering version of his band American Football while also being more heavily reliant on acoustic guitars.<\/p>\n
King of Whys is Kinsella\u2019s 8th full length as Owen. The new album finds Kinsella working with Bon Iver collaborator S. Carey, as well as a cast of outside backing musicians for the first time. Besides being Owen\u2019s best-sounding album to date, it has some of Kinsella\u2019s strongest and most concise songs. Additionally, whereas some of Owen\u2019s past work can get bogged down in too much experimentation and too many layers, here they are whittled down to only what is necessary.<\/p>\n
Lyrically, Kinsella explores a lot of issues regarding what it means to be a family man: arguments, sleep-deprived nights, and finances amongst them. For example, in \u201cThe Desperate Act\u201d Kinsella seems to be having a one-sided conversation with his wife. He talks of the difficulty of having \u201ctwo lives\u201d: one as a musician and one as a family man as the listener might infer. The \u201cman\u201d is disappearing and the \u201cmusician\u201d needs attention like a child.<\/p>\n
Emo has a bad name in today\u2019s music climate, which is unfortunate, because instead of sincerity and emotional honesty, we\u2019re under a constant barrage of layers of irony and crippling self-consciousness.<\/p>\n
Luckily, we have Owen carrying the heart-on-sleeve torch.
\n
\nRecommended If You Like: American Football, Death Cab for Cutie, Bright Eyes, Into It. Over It., Red House Painters, Mark Kozelek, Elliott Smith, Pedro the Lion, Cap’n Jazz, Joan of Arc, Owls
\nRecommended Tracks: 1 (Empty Bottle), 3 (Settled Down), 4 (Lovers Come and Go), 6 (A Burning Soul)
\nDo Not Play: 2 (Desperate Act), 5 (Tourniquet), 8 (An Island), 10 (Lost)
\nWritten by Josh Gaston on 09\/01\/2016 <\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mike Kinsella employs outside musicians for the first time while delivering Owen’s strongest, most concise effort to date<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6019,"featured_media":48710,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[181],"tags":[5206,4376,5204,5203,5205,2933],"class_list":["post-48709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rock-rotation","tag-american-football","tag-emo","tag-emo-is-not-a-bad-word","tag-mike-kinsella","tag-owen","tag-singer-songwriter"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/owen-king-of-whys_opt.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6019"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}