My old Mum used to say my Dad was “a man who things happen to”. Bearing in mind his adventurous background in Africa, India and beyond, this was quite true, but it’s a soundbite which could just as easily be used to describe young Rathmines singer/ songwriter OWENSIE.
From what I can gather, Owensie is still merely a stripling, yet his CV already includes time spent setting up squats in Leeds, a period in Brazil involving shootings and police chases and playing loud, aggressive guitar as be-dreadlocked guitarist around town in Dublin noise combos Terrodactyl (sic) and Puget Sound. Rather superior to the regular university and gap year stories I’d say.
I don’t know where and when Owensie shed his dreads, but it seems his musical epiphany came rather closer to home. Dublin’s Francis Street to be precise, where our hero bought a cheap acoustic guitar from a charity shop in 2008. It helped him re-connect with the classical guitar he learned along the way and set him on the path to displaying the sensitive singer/ songwriter soul he bares on his debut solo album ‘Aliens’.
Influential names like John Martyn, Jose Gonzalez and Nick Drake are being bandied round as touchstones and Owensie’s abilities as a guitarist stand up to the scrutiny. Fluid, dextrous and naturally melancholic, it has a hypnotic quality whether it’s supplying a sparse framework (like on the title track and the nocturnal folk-blues ‘Lonely Wood’) or letting the sunshine in on the evocative, Andalusian-tinged ‘Ronda’ which recalls the Durutti Column’s great ‘Amigos em Portugal’ album.
The minimalist approach can work wonders too. Despite its’ title ‘Owensie: Dark Places’ dances to a skipping bossa nova beat and is infused with a gentle Brazilian flavour, while the sparse, but telling use of strings (‘Aliens’) and Julia Mahon’s pared-back piano inflections (‘Cat & Mouse’) prevent the best songs from sounding too sombre and blue.
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There’s nothing ostensibly wrong with Owensie’s plaintive keen of a voice, but it doesn’t always have enough to distance him from the ever-swelling singer/ songwriter hopefuls clogging the corridors out there. A few of the tracks (‘Subtle Connections’ and ‘The Search’ especially) are also a shade too monochromatic and cry out for a few sonic embellishments, although the shadowy harmony vocal weaving its’ way through the closing ‘Tied to a Name’ really makes it stands out.
‘Aliens’, then, is a good start. It doesn’t deliver enough to rank its’ author with the hallowed names just yet and it can be a bit too stark for comfort, but it certainly marks Owensie out as not only a man who things happen to, but as one to watch.
Owensie on Myspace
Owensie at Bandcamp
Out on a Limb Records online
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