The Return of Christopher Owens
The ex-Girls frontman has finally delivered a solo record that rivals the best work of his legendary band
I hadn’t planned on writing a 1,000 word record review this weekend. The new album from Christopher Owens changed that.
When I used to write a lot of reviews, the whole process started to feel quite formulaic and joyless, not to mention a little futile. Do people still read reviews? I mean do they read them beyond the score? I suspect a few do, but most don’t. So now I try a little harder to write reviews that are worth reading, exploring what makes a record unique and digging into how it makes me feel. And I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair made me feel a lot, hence my desire to write about it. Hopefully that comes across in my No Ripcord review, which I’ve reproduced in full below (with the score out of ten deliberately omitted).
Christopher Owens
I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair
(True Panther Records)
The return of Christopher Owens, after seven years away, seems to have slipped under the radar of many. At the time of writing, I’ve only seen a couple of reviews online.
This is an artist whose upwards trajectory seemed utterly inevitable in 2011, when his critically-adored group Girls had just released their remarkable second album, Father, Son, Holy Ghost. And then, out of the blue, they split. I’m not sure the critics ever forgave Owens for this, although the patchy first fruits of his solo career certainly didn’t help. By the time of 2015’s Chrissybaby Forever, he’d become something of a niche concern, a largely forgotten figure in a fickle world defined by its never-ending search for the next thing.
Owens’ struggles as a solo artist led many to reflect on the importance of his Girls bandmate and producer, Chet “JR” White. As the music of Girls was often compared to Big Star, it seemed natural to wonder if White was the balancing Chris Bell figure to the more mercurial Alex Chilton-esque Owens? In the same way that Big Star and Chilton rarely sounded quite as focused or polished without Bell, Owens the solo artist has seemingly struggled to capture the effortless magic of old without White’s presence as a counterpoint.
When Girls debuted with 2009’s Album, the music press couldn’t get enough of Owens’ backstory. And for good reason —cults, tragedy and millionaire philanthropists are infinitely more interesting than the usual “we’re just four friends who formed a band” narrative. This context was vital in helping to make sense of the underlying sadness that characterised the group’s oeuvre. Sadly, the post-Girls chapters of Owens’ life have added further layers of darkness.
A serious motorcycle accident, a period of homelessness, and the tragic death of Chet White in 2020, following a failed attempt to reboot Girls, provide the updated context for Owens’ extended hiatus and his state of mind when making I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair. But rather than falling apart under the weight of serial tragedies, Owens has finally made the solo record his longstanding admirers have long suspected he had in him. Finally, he has bottled that magic and committed all that pain, grief, faith and hope to record — and the results are nothing short of spectacular.
The album is not perfect, of course, but I don’t really want to focus too much on the flaws here. I want you to go away and listen to I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair. I want you to discover that Christopher Owens is still a great songwriter and I want you to fall in love with the many highlights, which come thick and fast right from the off.
The punchy “No Good” reminds me a little of a monochromatic, bitterly bleak “Honey Bunny”. That song had a hint of gloominess, but here Owens embraces the despair — “go on, get lost, fuck off, stay gone” is hardly ambiguous. It’s really good though, recalling Elliott Smith at his tortured best.
Early single “I Think About Heaven” feels like a straight up exploration of faith, opening with a quote from Psalms and taking solace in thoughts of a heaven. Musically, it evokes Jens Lekman’s best late career work. Owens has talked a lot about his upbringing in the Children of God cult in the past and has touched on his relationship with the bible in interviews for this album. As a staunch agnostic, I used to find overtly religious material off-putting in my younger years. It doesn’t bother me at all now, presumably thanks to artists like Sufjan Stevens exploring their faith with such eloquence and beauty. I don’t share the views, but it doesn’t mean I’m not interested in how an artist’s faith impacts their worldview and creative process.
The intensity does drop in the middle third. “White Flag” and “I Know” are pleasant enough, but their meandering prettiness isn’t sufficiently engaging to justify a combined eleven minutes running time. Thankfully, it’s only a temporary dip and Owens has kept something special back for the home stretch.
The dreamy “Two Words” is an obvious highlight. Owens’ wounded vocal is well-suited to the shoegaze and dream-pop genres and his guitar skills and sheer range are significantly underrated. And is it just me or is there a slightly festive vibe to this? It’s only late October, but it works for me.
I read that the album’s heartbreaking finale “Do You Need A Friend” might be Owens’ finest ever work, but even that didn’t prepare me for an emotional gut punch to rival the greats. Owens has always had a knack for writing six or seven minute epics, with songs like “Hellhole Ratrace” and “Vomit” standing out in the Girls discography. And this is even bigger, bolder and weightier than those classics, its oppressive guitars, soaring gospel backing vocals (previously seen on “Vomit”), and brutal closing refrain of “If you really wanna know, I’m barely making it through the days” announcing the arrival of a true song of the year contender. An unexpected and surprisingly powerful Roxette reference seals the triumph.
Earlier, I drew some comparisons between White/Owens and Bell/Chilton, but having listened to I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair, I’m starting to see shades of Chris Bell in Christopher Owens, too. Both faced tough times and explored similar themes (faith, heartbreak) in bleaker solo material, which was unfavourably received in comparison to their earlier band output. Could “Do You Need A Friend” be Owens’ own version of “I Am The Cosmos”, his definitive statement on heartbreak? It’s certainly in the same ballpark as that hallowed classic.
Ultimately, such comparisons are a fool’s errand. Owens is on his own journey; it has surely been more circuitous and painful than most, but this is his path. Hopefully, I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair marks the beginning of a more stable period, both professionally and personally. It might not be new and it might not follow the current trends, but this is a rare document of heartbreak and hope with the power to move you to tears and make you smile, sometimes at the same time. It deserves any accolades it will receive and many, many more.
On either side of 2010, there were suddenly all these bands who were image perfect, like they'd risen fully-formed from the pages of a style magazine, left open on the counter of an independent coffee shop where a member of Godspeed! You Black Emperor had briefly worked as a barista. When I got around to listening to the music itself, generally something was off. Girls were one of those bands. Two more from approximately the same period were Savages and Hockey. Great look, but otherwise a bit mediocre, which in the vernacular of the music reviewer who is mindful of not treading on too many toes, translates into 8 out 10.
There was a band in the early 2000s called Ooberman whose debut album - The Magic Treehouse - I would describe as execrable. Later on, when nobody cared, they made some great and really good records that I am very pleased to own. Perhaps this is the fate of artists who were talked-up and elbowed to the front before they were ready. There really needs to be an adjective that describes the phenomenon.