The nine years since Christopher Owens’ last album, 2015’s Chrissybaby Forever, have been so relentlessly brutal that even restating the details of them here, however briefly, feels cruel. Yet, for those unaware, that period of time saw: a motorbike crash that left Owens bedbound, the loss of his day job, his fiancée leaving him, becoming homeless, living in a camper attached to his car. Then, his camper was stolen while his pet cat was still inside. Another devastating blow came in 2020, when his former Girls bandmate Chet “JR” White died at just 40 years old.
Owens begins his latest album, I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair, on a fittingly and unsurprisingly bleak note. “No Good,” which combines shades of psychedelic pop, Midwest emo and slacker rock, begins with a pledge to write “not one more” song “where I’m pretending everything will be okay”. Later, Owens demands: “Leave me alone, I’m dying here”. The song’s guitars and drums tumble over each other as if mimicking an emotional breakdown.
As is to be expected, there is no shortage of such devastating moments on Owens’s fourth solo album. On “White Flag,” he begins with a declaration of surrender and alternates between clear-eyed fury—“You have hatred in your heart,” he spits at an unidentified “you,” enunciating clearly, precisely and slowly—and self-destruction, as he walks toward “oblivion” on “So,” whose largely acoustic soundscape recalls Seven Swans-era Sufjan Stevens. Owens sounds utterly lost, plagued with questions like “Where are you my love?” and “Will I be alone forever now?”
But, for an album forged amidst unimaginable tragedy, there’s a surprising amount of hope scattered throughout I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair. On “I Know,” Owens offers a manifesto forged from hardship—one that feels fitting for our turbulent modern times: “I know / We’re gonna have to fight / Always / Yes, I know / We can’t give up the fight / Never, ever, no.” Meanwhile, on “This is My Guitar,” Owens charts the exhausting, redemptive process of beginning to piece one’s self back together again, penning an ode to the instrument that rescued him from rock bottom. Over a quietly strummed guitar, he sings, “This is my voice, I sing the best I can… This is my chance, the only chance I’ve got.” He sounds ready to take that chance.
Christopher Owens, famously, was raised in the abusive cult The Children of God and escaped at age 16, finding a new home in the Amarillo punk scene. It’s perhaps surprising then to see the ways God, and religion more widely, have inspired I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair. In the LP’s accompanying press release, Owens draws on the Book of Job and, on the song “I Think About Heaven,” he quotes Psalm 42 (“As the hart paneth after the water brooks”) and finds comfort in the idea of an afterlife (“I think about Heaven and I smile / Things don’t seem so bad”).
“I’m still not a denominational believer,” Owens told The Guardian in a recent interview. But, on the existence of a higher power, he said, “Maybe it’s not so black and white. Maybe there’s something that I do believe. Or maybe I believe that it’s not real per se, but it’s important for one’s life.” Growing older makes it harder and harder to see things in absolutes and tragedy only hastens this process, throwing into stark relief how little one knows.
Maybe it’s ironic, then, that this newfound embrace of unknowing has led to the wisest, most astute and emotionally compelling release of Christopher Owens’s career thus far. It all culminates in the seven-minute closer “Do You Need A Friend,” where the singer-songwriter wills himself to wait for better days, extending a supportive hand to listeners. The song alternates jarringly between earnest, hopeful declarations (“Yesterday don’t have to be tomorrow”) and downbeat admissions (“If you really wanna know / I’m barely making it through the days”). Sonically, its progression is decidedly non-linear too, with a theatrical buildup of guitar, feedback, drums and piano that ultimately dissipates into a quiet, calmly-collected instrumental final minute. It’s fitting—the journey through grief and self-discovery is rarely straightforward or predictable; it ebbs and flows in violent and unforgiving ways. Sometimes, the only solace—as Owens sings—is knowing that yesterday doesn’t have to be tomorrow and that “You’re gonna have to let go of your sorrow.”
