Matt Owens is a Bath-based artist who began his musical career as founder-member of indie-folk band Noah and the Whale.
This is his fourth album where we find him backed by The Delusional Vanity Project that started as a duo with Jimmy Besley on drums but is now a fully-fledged 7-piece gang. The D.V.P are billed as a song-based, valve-driven, twin-guitar weaving rock’n’roll” band.
The album title comes from the names of a guitar store in Twickenham where Owens’ bought his first electric guitar and Way Out West is also a reference to how friends reacted when he announced he was moving to Somerset.
Nostalgia for his London roots can be heard in the autobiographic closing track, Twickenham Station.
The album’s conventional sound doesn’t set out to tread new ground and, although the songs are solid enough, they are also fairly predictable in scope.
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You get introspection on Morning Light, heartache on You’re Not Gone and self-conscious anthemic rock Glasgow City Lights.
The reference to “ice cold beer and an old guitar” on the opening track One For The Grapes gives an accurate flavour of where they are coming from.
The song 5 Years Into Marriage, featuring a duet with Hannah White, provides a more personal tone .
All told there's not enough to empathise with amid the soul-searching swagger even though Death Sickness And Heartache shows that Owens is not afraid to bring realism into the mix.
Matt Owens' website
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