Owens’s Personal ‘Testament’

“A New Testament” completely renounces Christopher Owens’s previous image. The eccentric Owens, lead singer of the now-disbanded Girls, always seemed uncomfortable in his hipness and the indie scene. Perhaps the cover of the album best explains the spirit it embodies. On it, Owens stands center stage, hand on his red cowboy hat, surrounded by his supporting musicians. There is a lack of stylizing, not in a minimalist way, but in a way that makes the cover look like a poster for some low-budget reality show. Commenting on its design, Owens told SubTV, “It’s very anti-cool; I don’t know any of my peers that would do an album cover that simple.”

From the first bouncy strums of “My Troubled Heart,” the opening track on the album, it is clear this album is a departure from Girls’s standard indie surf-rock record. Owens goes above and beyond the standard of his peers in the male indie scene, where a particularly good voice is not expected, and demonstrates considerable vocal prowess and dexterity. He sings in many styles, from the breathy, soft beginning of “Overcoming Me” to the deep twang of “My Troubled Heart.” His voice ranges from very high vibrato in “Oh My Love” to low and steady in “It Comes Back to You.” Owens has the ability to adapt his voice to indie rock, country, and gospel, and he conveys emotion masterfully through his vocals.

The album is highly personal, much like his debut solo album, “Lysandre.” Owens is very transparent about the issues in his life through his songwriting. The autobiographical “Stephen” mourns the loss of his brother, who died of pneumonia in his infancy, and mentions both his father’s absence and his background growing up in the cult Children of God. Many of the songs also deal with love and heartbreak. They are from various stages of a relationship—“Overcoming Me” recounts the hopeful feeling at the beginning of a new love, “Never Wanna See That Look Again” is an apology, and “Nobody’s Business” is a simple song of being happily in love. Even in his romantic songs, however, he addresses profound family problems—“Mama didn’t raise no quitter, and I wanna make my daddy proud,” he sings on the breakup song “I Just Can’t Live without You.”

Though the album recounts many individual vignettes from Owens’s life, it does not paint a cohesive picture. There is no chronological or thematic order to the album. For example, it jumps from the anguished “Never Want to See That Look Again” to the optimistic “Overcoming Me.” This disjointedness prevents the album from living up to its potential. While “Lysandre” was a concept album with a recurring musical theme, “A New Testament” is simply a collection of songs Owens has been meaning to release for years.

Despite this, the album’s strength lies in the ambitious embrace of a huge variety of styles. The songs mostly have a melange of country and indie influence, but various other genres come through as well. Girls’s discography was dominated by indie surf rock, but both of Owens’s solo works go beyond this. Owens’s vocals on “My Troubled Heart” are reminiscent of Johnny Cash’s. This ’50s and early ’60s country vibe is a common thread through the album. In addition to this, “Stephen” reflects a heavy gospel inspiration. The song starts off with layered, harmonized voices, and the lyrics reflect religious themes. “Nobody’s Business” is a guitar-driven, happy, bursting song in the vein of the early Beatles, and “Never Want to See That Look Again” feels more like Girls’s trademark indie rock than the rest of the album. There is a hard strum between each line of the chorus and a pounding drum, recalling the power-ballads of the ’80s with its swelling instrumentation.

Though “A New Testament” is his second solo album, the songs on it were written throughout his career. Owens has been empowered by his transition from a fairly straightforward indie surf-rock, Coachella-playing band to a more experimental solo career that shares the eclecticness of his musical talent. “There’s nothing unique about this [album],” he told SubTV, laughing, but this is clearly not true. A New Testament spans an impressive number of genres and time periods and is a decidedly individual collection of music. No longer constrained by the structure of a band and able to hire a wide range of supporting musicians, Owens is at his most free on this album.