Owls
Owls
[Jade Tree; 2001]
Rating: 7.0
Indie Rock is Important. No city embodies that tragicomic claim like Chicago.
Thrill Jockey-- the silly coven of haughty and eminently geeky indie-rockers with
unbearable jazz pretensions and its arsenal of post-every-fucking-thing-under-the-sun
nomenclature-- has consistently been the most egregious of the Second City's many
labels vying for real-life importance, your serious esteem, and of course,
CD and show-ticket dollars. But while the über-musicianly Sir John McEntire and
his Knights of Bucktown have been out wielding Powerbooks, Kinsella(s) Inc. has
been steadily building an empire of pretension.
Sometimes tickling the critics into embarrassing coos of honeyed admiration, and
other times inspiring equally disproportionate rock-crit fatwas, Tim Kinsella
has succeeded where other Illini have failed: in disarming the full fury of his
detractors with nothing more than a smirk. I'm not talking, of course, about
Kinsella's actual countenance; I'm referring to his neo-absurdist temperament
and the obvious fun with which he goes about his business.
Even when he was just the scratchy-voiced, baby-faced ringmaster of Cap'n Jazz,
Tim Kinsella was already establishing himself as a first- (well, maybe second)
rate semantic clown and word-gamesman. With a penchant for double-entendre and
imagistic jokes, Kinsella charmed his partisans and alienated the rest of us
with his Duchampesque disregard for everything, and created a contested little
body of work which still polarizes fans of the genre. Personally, Joan of Arc
drives me up the fucking wall, but my dismissal of the band has nothing to do
with the personality phenomenon of Kinsella; they sorely lacked dynamism, and
there were too few hooks and too much blipped-over space for my liking.
Owls reunites the boys from Cap'n Jazz for another stab at the rock. Abthent
thith time ith the Promith Ring'th Davey Von Bohlen, but the remaining cast (Tim
Kinsella, brother Mike on drums, guitarist Victor Villareal, and bassist Sam
Zurick) are back in strong form.
So, too, is Tim Kinsella's jokiness, though that's not such a bad thing. Even
the typical, hideously Kinsellated title of "What Whorse You Wrote Id On" doesn't
detract from the opening track's elegant mood and almost sing-songy warmth. The
guitarwork is nothing short of gorgeous, with Villareal arpeggiating a trebly,
spidery path into your aural memory, his picking providing a textural counterpoint
to Mike Kinsella's ornate drumming, which it should be said has never sounded
this good.
"Anyone Can Have a Good Time" starts quietly and jangly over a semi-marshal beat
in non-standard time. Things seem to be meandering, only to find anchorage in
what passes for a refrain. The tonally challenged Kinsella spits tick-tocky
syllables over one more verse, and after a pleasant mood shift and instrumental
interlude, the song's end-section begins. "We fall into patterns quickly/ We
fall into patterns too quickly," sings a background Tim Kinsella, as a forefront
one screams, "Unname everybody/ Unname everyone," in emo bursts of surprisingly
well-hit notes as the song peters out.
"Life in the Hair Salon Themed Bar on the Island" (an apparent reference to
Beauty Bar on 14th St. in New York City), is the proggiest of the album's tracks.
That is to say, it sounds like indie rock interpreting Frank Zappa influences
from something they read in a book. The standout comes with the subsequent song,
"I Want the Blidingly Cute to Confide in Me." It encapsulates many of the album's
disparate, yet weirdly integrated, strains: its faux-jazzy rhythm excursions,
its Andy Summers-on-crack guitar playing, the intermittently truly beautiful
vocal melodies, and of course, Kinsella's lyrical shots in the dark.
Owls' music is an odd concoction of opposing and random musical and emotional
trajectories. You can hear echoes of Cap'n Jazz and, every bit as clearly, some
really weird "adult contemporary" musical phrases, too. The mélange works very
well enough, though, and hits the mute button on the death knell so many would
like sound on Kinsella's oddly resilient and shapeshifting career. Goddamnit.
-Camilo Arturo Leslie, October 23rd, 2001