{"id":6791,"date":"2013-04-23T16:15:51","date_gmt":"2013-04-23T16:15:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/?p=6791"},"modified":"2013-04-23T16:15:51","modified_gmt":"2013-04-23T16:15:51","slug":"christopher-owens-lysandre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2013\/04\/23\/christopher-owens-lysandre\/","title":{"rendered":"CHRISTOPHER OWENS – Lysandre"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"Christopher<\/a><\/p>\n

Chris Owens, songwriter, singer and guitarist, formerly of the band Girls, has released his first solo album since leaving the San Francisco group this past summer. Lysandre<\/em> is a love story, with the same awesome effect as a Girls record. By merely closing your eyes you can be swiftly picked up and away from cold, bleak Winnipeg and find yourself catching some waves on a San Francisco beach in 1964, drinking coke out of a glass bottle. While Owens maintains much of what made the two Girls\u2019 albums and one EP so impressive and different – such as their blatantly catchy tunes, sought-after guitar tone, and new love songs that sound like old love songs – \u00a0Lysandre<\/em> at times comes off as gimmicky, overdone, and simply too upbeat and happy.<\/p>\n

Owens dismisses much of the dreaminess of his past work and replaces the ethereal with in-your-face love songs. At the start, \u201cRiviera Rock\u201d<\/a> sounds to be an impressive and fun instrumental track but quickly begins to sound like a theme song from a Little Mermaid<\/em> sequel. Tracks like \u201cHere We Go Again\u201d and \u201cNew York City\u201d are excellent beach pop songs but the number of \u201cooh la las\u201d is overwhelming at times.<\/p>\n

When Girls was at its very best and most interesting, Owens\u2019 troubled childhood and his persistent feelings of fear came through in darker questioning songs that were unwound with phased out distortion and organ, while still expressing love and optimism. In Lysandre\u2019s weakest track \u201cLove is in the Ear of the Listener,\u201d Owens sings \u201cwhat if people are sick of hearing love songs, maybe I should just sing about dying.\u201d It would be nice if he could go back to doing both. (Fat Possum, fatpossum.com<\/a>) Gilad Carrol<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Owens, songwriter, singer and guitarist, formerly of the band Girls, has released his first solo album since leaving the San Francisco group this past summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[185,392,1056],"class_list":["post-6791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-chris-owens","tag-girls","tag-utn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6791\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}