Preview: Owen/Beat Kitchen

It’s really, really easy to hate Owen. Go ahead, try it! Walk around a college dormitory on a bitter, cold evening, when the winds of Mike Kinsella’s poetry have wistfully blown into the heart of a heartbroken loser with an acoustic guitar and a penchant for writing lyrics that employ the word “shackles” on multiple occasions. Based on their slow, incessantly droning songwriting and their “I’m so very lonely, can you feel it in the air?”-style of lyrics, chances are this doofus has the complete Owen discography, possibly even the complete Kinsella brothers discography (speaking of which, a friend determined that when in the midst of a hipster/elitist record collection battle, the ultimate one-upper is to say you have “Cap’n Jazz on vinyl”). Now, it’s not fair to judge a guy’s work by the way his fans have butchered his style and, admittedly, Kinsella’s a professional with a knack for writing delicate finger-picking and all that crap. But with the talent comes the task of writing something with at least a minuscule amount of entertainment value—don’t look for it in Owen. (Andy Seifert)