Christopher Owens: I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair

Christopher Owens has apparently gone through some shit since his Girls days. They are too many to enumerate, but I think a dog died. A bad motorcycle accident, a dead bandmate and some bad relationship stuff, along with some substance abuse (not in that particular order) left him living out of a vehicle. Which was then subsequently broken into or stolen during the pandemic. This all after escaping a religious cult as a child and at some point being a professional model and “it” rock star in the late 2000s / early 2010s with the aforementioned Girls. Point being, the dude has had a decade or two. And now, about ten years after his last one, and in year 45 of life, he has this seriously hippie-ass-titled solo record, I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair.

Everyone loves a reclamation project. And Owens is, if nothing else, a prime example of one. I bought those Girls albums back in 2009 and 2011 because as a good steward of indie rock tradition and Pitchfork’s glowing 9.1 and 9.3 reviews respectively, how could I not? And, looking back, I was just okay with them. Well, better with his debut, Album, than the follow-up, Father, Son, Holy Ghost. The latter record’s second half being just a bit too much on the renaissance fair tip. I was a younger man back then and I needed some teeth in my music. Something to hook me in and that didn’t smack of an almost insincere dedication to airiness and FM light rock. So I left Father, Son, Holy Ghost with the feeling that if this was Girls’ direction, I didn’t necessarily need to await their next album and could explore other avenues. Turns out it didn’t matter, because that third LP never came. And the band and Owens (and their terrible SEO score) faded into obscurity for me.

Honestly I’m not sure this album would have hit my radar either without Owens’ interesting and somewhat tragic backstory. His PR team is clearly working overtime. Like I said, reclamation project. But it would be nothing without some actually decent music. And while it doesn’t have those teeth I was looking for in the band’s output, I’m older and wiser and can wrap my head around this sort of alt singer-songwriter thing that he’s rocking these days. I’m more chill. He’s more chill. And the age and whatever has happened to him has also mellowed his voice to a timbre that I’m much happier with. I think a good deal of it is production as well, with his vocals much higher in the mix instead of buried in that 2010s echoey reverb every indie band thought they needed for some ungodly reason. I don’t pretend to be a music scholar or historian in any way, but, like his past efforts, there is something nostalgic and verging-on-throw-backy about his music. I’m not even certain the era, but my brain goes to the 1970s? Which I suppose was the era of the guitar-based singer-songwriter balladeer. I don’t really have a modern day binary because this isn’t generally where I go musically, but I’m sure there’s probably something in the vast Kurt Vile oeuvre that comes close. He’s not really a story teller like a Craig Finn or damaged emo poet like a Tim Kasher. Maybe he’s just his own man.