The Falls of Sioux

His 11th LP from his intimately introspective solo project, Owen, The Falls of Sioux found Mike Kinsella back in Eau Claire, Wisconsin (and hometown Chicago) to record with producer S. Carey for the third straight time. Engineer Zach Hanson from 2020s The Avalanche was also re-enlisted. A subtly more adventurous album -- subtly because its still unmistakably Owen -- it includes experiments with incorporating mottled electronics inspired by working with his cousin and American Football bandmate Nate on the avant-pop project LIES in the interim. The Falls of Sioux also finds Kinsellas perspectives continuing to slightly shift with middle age, with his typically dry humor creeping less acerbically into his weary tales of ill-fated relationships, alcoholism, self-destructiveness, and regret. Kinsellas wordplay is sharp as ever, however, with his flair for alliteration most conspicuous on "Qui Je Plaisante?," which includes sequences like "Im forgiven/Im forgotten/Im forsaken" and "All the time I spent posing, pretending, posturing" amid declarations of contrition ("I could have learned another language, written more songs/I could have saved my marriage"). Elsewhere, he sneaks in turns of phrase like "You and your cat got my tongue again" and "Bitters and bourbon/Undying burden," and "Mount Cleverest" opens with the paradoxical "Im done climbing Mount Cleverest." Meanwhile, musically, he opens the album with a hat tip to Ennio Morricone Westerns on "A Reckoning," an ominous yet playful track that paints a touring landscape with spare unison attacks, bass and fingerstyle guitar riffs, tubular bells, and slippery meter and arrangement shifts. Electronics surface more noticeably on songs including "Virtue Misspent," with its 80s-evoking recurring synth melody, and "Beaucoup," a dingy mix of acoustic strumming, shimmery synths, needly synth bass, and more. Subject matter-wise, the darker corners of The Falls of Sioux can be found on "Cursed ID" ("Ive got this cursed rope around my neck/And an unquenched thirst to pull on both ends") and the generationally traumatized "Hit and Run." Its another absorbing Owen set in which contentment is elusive, as embodied by the closing tracks "This is life now/Im so sorry about this." ~ Marcy Donelson