Owen - Ghost Town Review

Is the latest work from Mike Kinsella a rock masterpiece or a sleep aid on par with tryptophan?

Owen - Ghost Town (2011) – 5.8 / 10.0
Label: Polyvinyl


If you are an Owen fan who happened to wander across this piece of webspace and want to know where I get off giving Mike Kinsella’s latest album, Ghost Town, such a negative score, understand that I haven’t been following the career path of Owen/Kinsella, and it is entirely likely that I’m missing some necessary context to understand where Owen is coming from with Ghost Town. I don’t think that knowing every piece of work an artist has put out is necessary for reviewing their latest work—the only thing being judged in a review is the work, not the artist—but if you are a diehard Owen fan, don’t let me get in the way of your good time. Everyone else, though, might well do to give Ghost Town a pass.

I can’t say that a lot of hard work wasn’t put into this album, or that Kinsella isn’t a talented songwriter—songs like “No Place Like Home” and “The Armoire” would be standouts on any album put out this year, and the backing tracks feature a lot of busywork. For all of its hustle and bustle, though, Ghost Town is an exhausting listen. The songs feel tired, Kinsella sings like he is tired, and the lyrics read as though they were dragged through the dirt. Again, this might be something that Owen fans might expect or even embrace, but I had trouble getting the whole way through Ghost Town, a problem I usually don’t have with albums that are only 40 minutes long.

I can’t help but feel as though someone is going to say that my opinion of Ghost Town is irrelevant because I “just don’t get it”. The thing is, though, I don’t get it—hence the score above. Kinsella is a talented musician, which makes Ghost Town’s failure harder to pin down. It’s an album that works well as background noise, not something to be actively listened to. It’s an exhausting album, though, given Kinsella’s rapid output as of late, you likely won’t have to wait long to hear a better piece of work from Owen.