By Jesse Cataldo

Charting the career of Mike Kinsella is something like watching a nature documentary on a year in the life of a wild grizzly. Like the grizzly, romping through fields full of wildflowers in the first days of spring, Kinsella started off brash and noisy, as the drummer of seminal Midwestern indie rockers Cap’n Jazz. Things don’t change much for a while, the season shifts, Cap’n Jazz breaks up, and Mike joins Joan of Arc, again as a drummer; some foraging occurs. Soon Fall rolls around, and Mike makes a jump to the lead singer position, pushing the melodic jazz angle of American Football. The grizzly relaxes in its cave, puts on an early Miles Davis LP, and lights up a doobie. Finally, the first frost appears, winter sets in, and the grizzly retires for a season of hibernation. This is the part where Owen comes in.

I Do Perceive, Kinsella’s third full-length album under the Owen moniker, is in many ways similar to hibernation. The guitars are sleepy and barely noticeable, with occasional flare ups of electric that appear like a loud snore. The greatest danger of such sparse musical accompaniment is that it’s now totally up to the lyrics to carry the record. There’s nothing wrong with eight songs worth of minimalist strumming and pretty sounds, but if the lyrics are weak, it’s not going to amount to anything significant. Unfortunately, Kinsella gets things off on the wrong foot with the opening line clunker “not usually one to speak up / but your decisions of late have been pretty fucked up / and not in a good way.” The couplet is bad enough on its own, but when paired with Kinsella’s wishy washy speak sing delivery, sounds like a 14-year-old trying to impress his girlfriend by playing the openhearted minstrel with a bag full of songs about feelings.

The problems continue in “Playing Possum For A Peed”, with the line “I get by on my high cheekbones / no faith in people or a higher being.” Lyrics such as this re-circuitously derivative of the pompous, yet oh so sensitive singers of the thousands of “emo” bands which Kinsella has indirectly spawned. Rather than standing above these masses as their king, Kinsella maintains no real distinction, blending in like Waldo in a t-shirt and jeans. Even the topics the album covers are wholly unremarkable; Kinsella advises a friend who’s having trouble, cuts ties with another, pines over love lost and love found, and so on and on and on.

The Chronicle gives ´I Do Percieve´ by Owen one 1/2 out of five stars.