To nearly the same degree that Mike Kinsella once influenced the aesthetic of modern emo, his solo project Owen deconstructs it. His projects American Football and Owls channeled effusive lyricism and intricate instrumental interplay in short, brilliant bursts of creativity; by contrast, Owen albums usually find Kinsella alone with his acoustic guitar, making plainspoken assessments of the accruing obligations and disappointments of adulthood.
The King of Whys is Kinsella’s first collection of new material since the wildly successful American Football reunion in 2014, which put him in front of audiences that dwarfed any he saw during that band’s initial late-‘90s run. It might be tough for those newcomers to make the transition from that band’s gentle single “Never Meant” to King’s lead one, “Lost,” on which he sings roughly, “Stay poor and die trying/Take the drugs I didn’t take/Lay the whores I didn’t lay/’Cause I was too afraid that I might like it.” This is Kinsella’s most extreme Owen album yet, the most bitter, the funniest, the saddest, and the most ambitious.
It’s also the first time one might assume that Owen is a full band. The King of Whys was mostly written and recorded in two nine-day sessions with S. Carey, a member of Bon Iver who opened for several of American Football’s reunion dates. It’s Kinsella’s first time working with an outside producer and a backing set of musicians (as well as the first time he’s recorded an album outside Chicagoland), and Carey’s imprint is strong in the brassy orchestration, textural found sound, and a layer of aloed reverb that soothes rough edges in the mix. It could easily be confused for Kinsella walking in on a Volcano Choir or Bon Iver session, and amplifies the newfound emotional urgency in Kinsella’s lyrics.
The King of Whys is never not magnificent, maybe too much for its own good–despite Kinsella’s unsparing account of his father's alcoholism and depression, the handclaps and chipper strumming of “A Burning Soul” could’ve made it a mid-‘90s college hit à la Guster. Many of the initially novel aspects of The King of Whys teased out by Carey–wisely utilized trumpet, percolating polyrhythms, mid-song digressions into gorgeous guitar lattices–nod back to American Football. The King of Whys can often seem like an answer to that band’s self-titled debut album, inverting that record’s youthful insouciance to express a tenderized, emotionally exhausted adult mindset. “Don’t worry about the money, we’ll get by or we won’t,” Kinsella sighs on “Sleep Is a Myth,” before seemingly muttering into his sleeve, “You look better hungry.”
Much of The King of Whys takes that tone of one-sided mental arguments, ones that could probably decimate any relationship if they were verbalized. But for better or worse, Kinsella’s had too many drinks or worked too many hours to take it there. “If you give me this battle, I’ll give you the war/I’m tired of being someone’s, tired of keeping score,” Kinsella sings on “Tourniquet,” a transaction in emotional economics that could’ve been voiced on any previous Owen record. But then he summarizes the album’s overall shift in tone: “Give me that goddamn bottle and then leave me alone,” he snipes. It actually sounds reasonable to let him destroy himself for awhile; it’s a small price to pay if he’ll feel those involuntary bouts of bitterness and hatred without acting on them.
There are some incredibly ugly things expressed on The King of Whys, but the tone never suggest Kinsella endorses them–it’s hard to imagine “Tourniquet” getting the emo sing-a-long treatment of, say, Bright Eyes’ “Lover I Don’t Have to Love” or Death Cab for Cutie’s “Tiny Vessels.” He’s just as likely to use the insularity of The King of Whys to make jokes about the futility of expression: “I’m so settled down, it feels like the earth moves if I do,” he cracks. Meanwhile, “Empty Bottle” is damn near acoustic stoner rock, invoking two separate but related escape valves for Kinsella in Chicago. In his head, hell is a crowded goth night; heaven is dreaming of being asleep, speaking French, and a jukebox that plays nothing but Isn’t Anything. Whether or not Kinsella can actually remember his teenage feelings, The King of Whys proves that he can still experience them.
