I freely acknowledge that this sounds incredibly sad and geeky but every year I list my Top 10 albums (Never mind the Brits and the Mercurys, this is the list that everyone making music REALLY wants to get onto) and without wishing to cause anyone to shout "Under two months til Christmas!", it will soon be time to meet with my mate, Alex, in a pub in London for us to go through our respective 2013 Rolls of Honour.
With that in mind I thought I'd take to the Blog and write about my Favorite Album of 2012, Owen Thomas with his debut solo album, Languages (Or: Get Dark and Find Yourself).
At which point, it is highly likely that anyone outside of the USA will go "Mr Marsh, I know that you have a fondness for the obscure but you have outdone yourself! You wrote about the Miracle Mile a while back but at least they've been mentioned in the Music Press but I have trawled every 2012 issue of Mojo, Q, Uncut and Hello and there's no mention of him! Who is he?"
Before I answer that question. I have to point out that, from a personal perspective, 2012 was a very strong year for Music. You had great comebacks from Dexys, Love and Money and Graham Parker and the Rumour, a fantastic debut from Merry Hell, tremendous records from two consistent contributors to my Top 10 (Mary Chapin Carpenter and Bruce Springsteen) and a surprisingly (from my perspective) strong album from Keane. But the best of the lot by some distance was Owen Thomas and it's a record that deserves your attention and, frankly, some of your money.
So who is he? Well Owen Thomas was the lead singer of The Elms. Again the furrowed brows of my audience! Simply put the Elms were one of the best kept secrets of the US music scene in the last ten years. They came out of the Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) arena in the US at the start of the 00s but to be honest didn't sound like most of their CCM brethren (who tended mostly lesser carbon copies of "secular" acts e.g. there were CCM acts at that time who sounded like they owned every album U2 owned and not much else). The Elms first album "The Big Surprise" (2001) wore it's English influences very heavily on its sleeve, there was a strong 60s vibe at work. It was a confident rock and roll record with some great tunes ("Who got the meaning?" and "Lifeboat" in particular).
As good as the first album was, the follow up was a leap into the stratosphere. Truth, Soul and Rock and Roll (2003) is, to be blunt, one of my favourite albums of all time. It pulls off a fantastic trick as it wears it's influences (Rolling Stones, Oasis, Tom Petty amongst others) proudly but ends up sounding like the Elms. It also revealed Owen Thomas to be a wonderfully literate and empathetic lyricist, a man wise beyond his years (He was 22 at the time).
I have to confess to not being a big fan of the Elms' 3rd album "The Chess Hotel (2006)". It was no fault of the Elms but when you like an album as much as I did "Truth Soul and Rock and Roll", maybe I was always going to be disappointed in what came next. I just found it too dense and heavy (which I admit makes me sound like a wuss).
However, the next album "The Great American Midrange" (2009) was an absolute cracker. Here the English influences were turned right down and instead what we had was a American Heartland rock and roll record, in the vein of Tom Petty (him again) and John Cougar Mellencamp. Yet again it transcended those influences and was indeed a better record than either of those gentlemen had made in almost 20 years. Reviews described them as the "best little rock and roll band in America" and that was about right. The Elms had long since moved outside of the confines of CCM but were still relatively little known outside of the dedicated fanbase. This, though, felt like a breakthrough. It was confident and full of songs ("Back to Indiana", "Country Fair", ""This is how the world will end") that people who like American Rock should hear.
So what happened next? Yep, they split up! I was gutted! Apparently it was all very amicable. They just felt things had run their course. You had to respect their decision, of course, too many bands these days go on too long when the muse hasn't just left them, it's buggered off with all their money and probably the clothes they were wearing (Oasis leap to mind at this point). HOWEVER that wasn't the case here. This felt like a band that, creatively, had hit a rich seam. Surely there were more great records to come. But, no, they were gone and, muttering "Why couldn't Maroon 5 have split up instead" I just had to accept it.
And then, something wonderful happened. On 27th November 2012 with hardly any fanfare it was announced that that very day Owen Thomas was releasing a solo album. Possessed by an excitement unseemly for a man of my age I rushed onto Owen's website where the album was streaming (Whilst many of my generation mourn the passing of those days when you scoured the local record shop for a new release- oh the romance of it all etc.- there is a lot to be said for the wonders of the Internet where you can hear a new release without waiting for a goon of a DJ to play it and buy it without leaving the house!).
Now....I have to admit that upon first hearing my brow was somewhat furrowed. I don't know exactly what I was expecting but I suppose somewhere in the back of mind I thought I was going to get "The Great American Midrange Part 2". From the opening seconds of the first track, Houdini, it was clear that that wasn't going to happen. As mentioned the Elms had evolved into a classic American Heartland rock band, with a very clear anthemic sound. But from the opening seconds of the first track, Houdini, it is clear that we are confronted by a very different beast indeed. A somewhat distorted guitar leads into a sound which strays the lo-fi arena for want of a better phrase. Slightly fuzzy guitars, slightly murky production, mostly medium paced songs as opposed to the straight ahead rockers that the Elms arrived at. If the Great American Midrange strapped the listener into an open top car and sped off down the highway, Languages was going on foot and wandering around the backstreets, we had time, there were things to see!
But unlike some records that you play once and think "Mmm not sure, might be a grower!" and then three months later, it's boot fair bound, there was something about Languages that made you want to play again.....and again...and again. It became, frankly, addictive. I listen to a lot of music and something has to be VERY special to demand repeated plays (because there's so much music and so little time). But LANGUAGES clung like a limpet to my computer!!
The thing that initially grabbed my attention were the lyrics. I mentioned that right from the start of the Elms' career that Owen was a very gifted lyricist. "Truth, Soul, Rock n Roll" contains many absolute gems, "Life is just all your moments in a row" from "Burn and Shine" is one of my favorite lyrics going. What made the lyricists particularly poignant and powerful on Languages was that Owen made quite clear on his website that this was an album borne out of difficult personal circumstances. The previous two years had been intensely emotional for him. He had been in a very close relationship with a girl and felt strongly that this was the one but then they had split up and it is clear from the lyrics that he was left absolutely heartbroken. At the same time he lost his grandmother who he was clearly close to. But then out of all that heartache, he felt that he really found himself (Hence the subtitle of the album). To quote from his website "I got dark. I really let myself feel the things that were happening. I decided that I had to properly hurt before I could properly heal. It was an experience of the deepest kind of discovery. It was brutal. And it changed my life"
Now I know that many of you may be going "Oh Lord save us, we're in Phil Collins territory. I only have to play this and waves of mawkish sentiment flow out of the speakers". Allow me to firmly reassure you that this is definitely not the case. This album should go with a sticker that says "Sentiment free!" Owen Thomas pulls something off that is rare amongst songwriters, he writes about real emotions in such a way that doesn't make you reach for either a sharp object or the sick bowl. Instead this is an extraordinary honest record with lyrics that one can understand and empathise with. He is often direct and scathing ("I Don't Miss Caring (or "Cracks and Potholes")), which was one of those great "Two Fingers to your ex" songs but then can be wise and reflective (The truly magnificent Factors (Or:"Things will turn out fine"))- by the way, one of the few quibbles I have with this record is that Owen does need to make up his mind what he's calling songs and the album itself- enough with the brackets already! But whatever situation he is addressing, you feel like going "Hey I've been there!" Like I said, that takes some doing. And along the way, as can be guaranteed with Owen, you get some great quotable lines, such as "You know I'm still a recovering heartbreakaholic". Tremendous!
This, of course, may all sound like HEAVY GOING! The fact that it isn't is down to two things. Firstly this album isn't just about the heartbreak and loss that Owen went through but how he came to terms with it and feels that he came through the other side a better person. This doesn't mean that you get 11 songs of misery and anger and then a huge jolly sing along at the end which sounds like it's dropped by from a different album if not a different planet (Try listening to "Everything's Different Now" by Til Tuesday for an example of THAT). That sense of coming to terms with what's happened permeates the whole record so whilst the last track ("Who knows?") is indeed a positive closer, it feels like a logical and satisfying end to the record.
Again I can hear you going "Great stuff Marshy. But it still sounds more like Prime Time Drama than a Rock and Roll record". Well that my friends is where you're wrong because the second thing that makes this record fantastically enjoyable as well as emotionally satisfying is the sheer quality of the tunes and arrangements. As mentioned on first listen, this is much less straighforward record than the Elms' work, the production denser, the instrumentation more acoustic. But then that suits the lyrics. we're talking about a real person's experiences here rather than "Mama We're all Crazee now" (And yes, smartarses, I know that was Slade and not the Elms). However this doesn't stop the tunes coming to the fore after a few listens and, once they do, they stick limpet like to the brain. All the way through the album. There's not a dud here. And there's tremendous variety as well. The afore-mentioned "Houdini" has a great tension to it but has that confidence that all great American rock songs have, "I Don't Miss Caring" just swaggers, "Travel Through" feels likes you're driving along a deserted road at night, the street lights overhead whilst "Factors" is just the most beautiful acoustic ballad (I love that song in case you can't tell!). Meanwhile "Take My Heart Down To The Bottom" has a great chorus complete with "Woo Hoos" (All great choruses should have Woo Hoos). It is a GREAT ROCK RECORD.
So the record leaves Owen in a Good Place. And it leaves the listener reaching for the repeat button. For such an open and honest record, dealing with weighty subjects, the overall effect remarkably uplifting.
It also leaves us with two questions.
1. What now for Owen? After the Elms split up, I quite expected that that would be the last I would hear from him. I certainly didn't expect a solo record THIS good. And now I want more!!
2. Languages is on i tunes. When are you going to buy it?
