The Owls - Daughters And Suns

Download: The Owls - "Peppermint Patty"
Download: The Owls - "All Those In Favor"
Download: The Owls - "Airplane"

The Owls
Daughters and Suns (Magic Marker, 2007)
Grade: B-

Daughters And Suns, the first recording in four years from beloved Minneapolis quartet The Owls, begins with the lines "We could take the hard road/if it's the only way/we could take the long road/that we've just begun". These could mean one of two things for the listener. The first is that the line will illuminate the reasons why the band took so long in between recordings and the second is the group is telling you that you are in store for a long, strange musical adventure.

To find answers to these questions, one may have to listen very carefully to Daughters and Suns, which is The Owls first album proper. This is an approach that is both beneficial and detrimental: beneficial because careful listenings show that The Owls are expert craftsmen, delicately layering sunny-sad songs like "Welcome To Monday" and "Issac Bashevis Singer" with intertwining boy-girl harmonies (which, at different times, sound like Low and The Velvet Underground), shimmering 12-string guitars and an adorable sense of melody; detrimental because, after 14 songs, the music begins to bleed into each other so that you have a hard time telling one midtempo Kinks/Belle and Sebastian song from the other. It's as if that, in the time between records, The Owls have gotten so comfortable with themselves that they see no need to shake things up

Fortunately, there are a few highlights, such as "Peppermint Patty" and "All Those In Favor" which are flat-out gorgeous and show the band at their most assured. But other songs, like "Yellow Flowers", are pretty, but fail to stand out. Ultimately, Daughters and Suns feels like having a conversation with a person who is clearly intelligent, but also very shy. The points they are making are clearly worthwhile and worth sharing, but you'd wish that they would say what they are saying with a little more confidence and variety.


The Owls on the Current
CD Release Party Tonight At The Cedar Cultural Center
Myspace Page

(Jonathan Graef)

CD Release Party: The Owls, Nov. 8th, At Cedar Cultural Center

Download: The Owls - "Peppermint Patty" (from Daughters and Suns)
Download Sample: The Owls - "Baby Boy" (from Our Hopes And Dreams)
Download Sample: The Owls - "Forever Changing" (from Our Hopes And Dreams)
Download Sample:The Owls - "Drop Me A Line" (from Our Hopes And Dreams)

This past Tuesday, Minneapolis-based folk-pop act The Owls released their second album, entitled Daughters and Suns (zing!) via Magic Marker Records. Boy, this is getting more twee by the minute, isn't it? To celebrate the occasion, the quartet will be having a CD release party on Nov. 8th at the Cedar Cultural Center. Tickets are 10 dollars through Ticketweb in advance and 12 dollars on the day of the show. Doors open at 7 p.m., show begins at 8 p.m.

For those of you who don't know The Owls, Daughters and Suns represents their first release in three years. The group combines elements of The Velvet Underground (the latter albums), Belle and Sebastian and Love (how could a song called "Forever Changing" not be an homage to Arthur Lee in some shape or form?) to create bittersweet pop music that's begged to be dotted over by adorable hipsters. This means you and me.

At the top of the post, you can download samples of three songs from Our Hopes And Dreams and one complete download from Daughters and Suns, the single "Peppermint Patty".

MySpace Page

(Jonathan Graef)