Owen - The King Of Whys

Mike Kinsella has been releasing music as Owen for fifteen years now, ‘The King of Whys’ is his eighth album in the guise. As such, it’s a collection of songs that see Kinsella as confident as possible in his skin.

Reuniting American Football in 2014, Kinsella took a step back into his formative, emotional teenage years, and ‘The King of Whys’ appears to be a reaction against this. The vast majority of the album is told from the present day, with Kinsella as a father, a husband, and a son.

Highlight ‘A Burning Soul’ deals with his father’s alcoholism, and Kinsella’s growing compassion and forgiveness towards him as he grows older - “he wasn’t a saint, but he wasn’t a bad man”.

For ‘The King of Whys’, Kinsella invited other musicians into the recording process - up until this point, almost every instrument has been played by himself. The result is a consistently textured record, with beautifully integrated strings.

At this stage of his career, no Owen album is going to completely reinvent Mike Kinsella as a songwriter - he’s too entrenched in the things he does so well - but he’s a master of the slow-burn. Being able to track the slight but definite progression through each next Owen album is infinitely rewarding, and ‘The King of Whys’ does its job perfectly as such.