"I was tempted to call this Christopher Owens' Album, because for me it's really about getting back to the basics," Christopher Owens told Stereogum last week. He was talking about his new solo album Chrissybaby Forever, which he made available to stream on May 27, a few days before its official digital release, and the sentiment prompted a question: What does a "back to the basics" album look like for an artist who traffics in the basics? Owens named his breakout group, which consisted of two men, "Girls." His songs relied on the simplest, most dog-eared lyrics imaginable, and he reached for chord progressions that you can anticipate in your bones. His first solo album, 2013's Lysandre, was written almost entirely in the key of A. Open chords, open voicings, open arrangements—everything open. How do you reduce further down than that?
Chrissybaby is the product of a fruitful, month-long recording session with engineer JJ Wiesler, with Owens playing all the instruments. (It turns out this is what he means by "back to the basics.") The album opens with the same strummed chord that introduced "Lust for Life"; Owens is unafraid of reminding you of other work, even songs he's already written. But Chrissybaby turns out to be more imaginative, looser, more lively, and more appealing than his music has been in a few years. There are quirks and little touches here, hiccups or fillips that he might have beveled off of previous projects for fear they added resistance to his classic pop songwriting. These songs are allowed to be weirder, and in smaller bites they're tangier and stranger than they've tasted in awhile.
The best tracks on the short album are a good argument that Owens is more appealing the less grandiose he gets. He whistles pretty melodies on "Heroine (Got Nothing on You)" like Ram-era Paul McCartney. "I Love You Like I Do" consists of a few lines about loving someone for who they are with the lyric sheet instruction "(repeat to infinity)." It is sung by a chorale of female voices, and it feels both like a lullaby and a distillation of Owens' mission, which is to use pop music to comfort and uplift you, and to remind you that you are loved.
It's hard to be as captivated by his innocence or his openness, though you can still be comforted and charmed by it. "It's not 1+1, or ABC/ It's not a formula or a mystery/ It's not right or wrong, it's just the music of my heart" is the chorus to "Music of My Heart", and typing it out feels like enumerating the chemical makeup of sugar. The point of the song is the feeling, and the feeling he creates is generous and relaxed and, again, open. The song around the lyrics moves in enough interesting directions to keep it from turning into a scented greeting card: It's a series of tiny sounds (a squelching, distorted bass, some hand percussion, isolated guitar strokes) appearing in corners of a spacious arrangement like cartoon gophers popping their heads up in an open field.
There are a few flickering shadows in the lyrics here and there. "Me Oh My" is a weightless, silvery song about mistrust, and on "Selfish Feelings" he sings, bluntly, about lust and physical need. "Inside Out" wrestles in his plain language with despair and doubt. They are faint reminders of the darker, bigger things he can tackle when he sets his sights on them, and of his ability to set stories taken directly from his life in elemental, universal terms. When he sings "I'm still out looking for a spiritual release/ I'm not an antichrist I just can't fake belief" on "Inside Out", it resounds with both painfully specific and powerfully general meaning.
Chrissybaby is 16 songs long, which might be more of this particular pleasant, low-stakes mood than you need at one uninterrupted stretch. Sometimes you might crave a sharper thought than he seems interested in formulating, or a darker sound than he wants to make. But that's all right. He's going to make another record soon, almost certainly (to hear him tell it, he wrote and recorded this one almost before he realized it was happening), and even if his moment in the zeitgeist has passed, he seems like an artist who is always going to be here, telling us what he needs us to hear in the most direct language he can find. He is going to remain open, and so should we.
