Music Monday

This Guy Makes Some Pretty Amazing Music When Not Posing on a Bike in a Park with his Dog, Wife, and Crying Kid
That was actually going to be the title of the new Owen album, but the bigwigs over at Polyvinyl thought it was "unwieldy" and didn't make for a catchy acronym. Suits, man.

At any rate, first off, apologies. We have been lax on the posting and near non-existent in the blogosphere since our vacation south of the border. We deserve any pent up aggression you may hold toward us. But before you go and punch your computer screen, listen to this week's song of the week, from emo-gets-old-and-pretty veteran Mike Kinsella—AKA Owen. This guy's long been one of my favorite artists—starting out as a kid in the OLD old school emo band Cap'n Jazz with his brother, Tim, and Promise Ring frontman/recipient of a HUGE Katie crush, Davey von Bohlen, then moving on to Joan of Arc. His band American Football wrote what is seriously my favorite song of all time—Never Meant (courtesy of Can You See the Sunset). Hands down. It just beats out The Spinanes' Hawaiian Baby.

With the release of New Leaves, Kinsella marks his fifth full-length under his solo moniker as he continues to put stories of coming to terms with growing old and somewhat boring to music that, in my humble opinion, is beautiful. I don't hear many great strides forward in the evolution of the song-writing or instrumentation, but this is one of those guys/bands that I really never want to see change much. I love his music and, for one, am just psyched there's more of it out there.

Owen's playing the Mercury Lounge on Friday and Union Hall in Park Slope on Saturday, both shows with The One AM Radio. Check out the song of the week, courtesy of Knox Road, to the right. And you can listen to the other tracks on the album over at the Onion.