Owen – No Good for No One Now (Polyvinyl)

This album has lots of pretty acoustic guitars and plenty of smart lyrics, but the singer sounds like he’s trying too hard to show that he really believes what he’s singing. Like all annoying singers who sing good songs, after you’ve been listening for a while, you tend to forget what you found so grating at first. “Good Deeds” is the highlight with the fine closing lyrics:

I know, it feels good.

So good that we should tonight

because maybe my mom’s right—

our good deeds won’t save us

(just true faith in Jesus).

So in the name of her Lord,

let’s do what we shouldn’t some more.

You gotta love the theological concept of Original Sin being used to rationalize going all the way with a girl. You also gotta love the very idea of writing a song that struggles with the morality of pre-marital sex in these “Fall of Rome” times. Maybe it’s because No Good for No One Now was, as it says in the liner notes, “Recorded at Mom’s.”

MP3 of “The Ghost of What Should Have Been” is available from Polyvinyl Records.