Review: Owls - Two
[Polyvinyl; 2014]
Rating: 4.5/10
By Zack Baker, Editorial Director
Key Tracks: “I’m Surprised…”
Reuniting a band can be really tough to pull off, and, unfortunately, Owls just couldn’t quite fit everything back together. Coming 13 years after the band’s debut and only other record, Two feels like an attempt to recapture lightning in a bottle.
Owls is essentially the now-legendary “emo” band Cap’n Jazz reincarnated without guitarist Davey von Bohlen (who went on to found the similarly emo-seminal band The Promise Ring), and their music shares a lot in common with their work as Cap’n Jazz. A little more mellow and less frenetic than the young and reckless work of the older band, Owls’ debut already felt like cutting-room floor songs andTwo only stresses that feeling.
In the decade since Owls’ debut, the members of the band have gone on to create some wonderful and very important music. The Kinsella brothers are essentially synonymous with the twinkly brand of emo, having served in seminal bands such as Joan of Arc and American Football.
But Two lacks the sense of maturity that the members have captured on other releases, instead feeling like a retread of safe territory. The instrumentals still play around with funky timings and call-and-response guitar work, the vocals are still sparse and the lyrics are as frequently incomprehensible as ever. But it’s just not enough to be weird any more.There are a lot of things that just don’t come together quite right on this album, but the vocals stick out most prominently. Tim Kinsella is known for his lazy drawl, but its usual charm is almost completely absent here. Instead of sounding coy or perfectly-confused, he instead simply sounds bored. The vocals are thankfully sparse, with most songs riding a groove rather than a lyric, but vocals shouldn’t ever be as distracting and out-of-place as they are on Two.
Many songs finding the band right on the edge of hitting the old groove that made their early work satisfying, but they rarely come together to make anything that feels as precisely disjointed as the best Owls or Cap’n Jazz songs--instead feeling like an album stuck together with old bits of tape and ready to fall apart at any moment. “I’m Surprised…” is a rare exception, somehow managing to find that perfect balance of discomfort that makes this band’s work feel surprising and vital.
Elsewhere, the band stumbles track after track. Feeling at all times simultaneously too-long and uncomfortably barren, songs feel more like early jam sessions that will eventually be fine-tuned than actually finished products. For example, “Oh No, Don’t…” starts off with a promisingly heavy and downtrodden instrumental, but Tim’s repetitive singing and a way-too-long groove at the end leaves the song feeling drugged. Not in a cool, psychedelic way, but in a “took too much NyQuil and about to pass out in class” sort of way.
The biggest struggle with this album is that it feels like these artists are trying too hard to recreate the music that people have seemingly just now discovered. Sure, Cap’n Jazz may be required listening for fans of the new emo wave, but the members have gone on to make music more interesting than what they were putting out in their teens.
Two feels far too much like simply reliving the “glory days” for this gang of musicians, who are still making beautiful and relevant work this very second. It’s a record that feels out-of-time and overly nostalgic, and will likely be destined to the same fate as the original Owls record: decent but forgettable material in the discographies of some of the most important indie musicians of our time.
