This is the fourth solo album by an Edinburgh-based singer songwriter who used to be part of a little known Americana outfit The Felsons and who counts Irvine Welsh as one of his fans.
His first two albums explored his Scottish roots, while for Whisky Hearts he indulged his love of Nashville country.
For this album he's directed his radar towards the Big Apple which even included booking a room in the Chelsea Hotel to help get into the New York state of mind.
He hooked up with NYC producers Dave Derby and Ray Ketchen and called upon local musicians and one of the city's female vocal talents, Kendall Jane Meade.
Derby plays guitar, bass and keyboards and also wrote one of the songs, Wander On. Meade, of the band Mascott, provides backing vocals on five of the tracks and duets serenely on Springtime.
Despite the specific American setting, the songs are primarily bitter sweet love songs where geographical location is academic. Even when Owens does refer to the city, its scale and scope seems ,paradoxically, to heighten his introspective mood rather than fire any broader perspective or excitement.
Solo (Valentine NYC) is about feeling alone in these unfamiliar surroundings while Snowglobe finds him frustrated to be snowbound in December ("get me out of here").
The title track , the album's closing song, appears to mark the conclusion to this phase of his life - the end of a relationship prompting the poignant task of dividing up their record collection ("you can go with Joan, I'll go with Dylan").
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The ten tracks are evenly divided , somewhat quaintly, into Side A and Side B with a focus on smooth melodic folk-pop in a similar vein to Prefab Sprout or Aztec Camera.
In Desert Star, Springtime and Baby Fireworks these glow with a sunny optimism to provide a contrast to the more wistful songs about old flames like Lost Time ("don't cry on my shoulder, don't prey on my mind") and The One That Got Away ("we forget what we try to remember and we remember what we try to forget").
In between, No One's A Failure advocates taking philosophical perspective on the basis that life's too short to wallow in miserablism.
All in all, an album of mostly bright, sunny songs dampened by scattered showers. In other words, everywhere you go, you always take the weather with you.
Dean Owens' Website
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