Dean Owens, our favourite Leither is back, this time embroidering his wares with some well heeled Italianana; spaghetti (country and) western, maybe, for an album better than that pun.

Release Date: 14th February 2025

Label: Continental Song City

Format: CD / vinyl / digital

DEAN OWENS IS BACK

As all his spirits and sinners commune together, in the desert scapes of the American south-west he has made his aural own. A one-man Calexico, this quietly spoken Scotsman has been cloning tex-mex tropes now for so long and so convincingly that Calexico, the band, consider him one of theirs. And, once more, it is John Covertino, of that band, who is sometime present to facilitate still further his immersion into this widescreen format. Alongside a host of Italians. Huh? Yes, as, rather than New Mexico or West Texas, this album was crafted in Emiliana Romagna, Italy, produced by one Don Antonio Gramentieri, who has a track record of working with the likes of David Hidalgo (Los Lobos) and Alejandro Escovedo. Should you wonder why, this set celebrates, in part, Owens’ own Italian forbears, in particular, as we will see, one Ambrose Salvona.

As with his last two releases, Owens has earlier issued a set of 3 sequential EP’s, to include some songs here and some not, as a series of tasters, setting the mood. Designed to complement rather than configure, they allow a sense of formative discovery, of work in progress. There is thus little sense of déjá écouté, so, sun burning high in the sky, let’s dive in.

FAMILIARLY FORLORN

Eden Is Here opens with Owens’ familiarly forlorn vocal and shimmery heat haze guitar. Bass and drums slowly seep in, and it is bleakly beautiful. “Eden is here“, he sings, “all around us. And now.” Could this be a rarely positive sentiment from the singer? The giveaway is that, rather than the desert, this was written for the Italian hills, the sound more redolent of the former, a somewhat less unforgiving paradise. A cowboy strum and some surf-twang guitar then introduce the brief instrumental, Spirito, like the Shadows on mescal, with mariachi trumpet billowing out over a campfire.

More a way to allow the clip clop of My Beloved Hills to hone into view, it is a nonetheless engaging interlude. Here there is a piano to add a third dimension to the soundstage, and if it all feels too maudlin and melancholy, get up to speed, that is this man’s forte. Whether we are to imagine the Roman hills, the Sierra Nevada or even the good old Campsie Fells, go with what you want, they all fit, if through various glasses, darkly, as strings come sweeping in, in a mix of retro and resolute. David Gray comes very much to ear in this vocal, it being about time Owens made a similar leap into the mainstream.

BY CONTRAST

Light This World is an upbeat canter, a sense of horseback informing the groove. Dual drummers invoke the hoofbeats, with Covertino slotting in alongside Piero Pirelli, part of the core Italian sidesmen, with Danilo Galli on bass and Luca Giovacchini on guitars, a role he shares with the album producer, who tackles also the keyboards. This has an epic feel about it, abetted by the sweeping strings and dense horns. Backing vocals come from, no less, Kirsten Adamson, this track encapsulates the precison with which Owens has made this sort of genre his own. So, no surprise, if cawing beckons in track 5, which it does.

The Buzzard And The Crow, evocative more of the former, is another sun parched day in Eden. With his voice muted through some sort of vocoder, this attaches an otherworldy detachment to this song, which matches a Jacques Brel style melody with eerie clangs of guitar and clunks of percussion. The string section shimmy in, and out again, replaced, by the end, with what sounds like Native American duct flute, together with a final flourish of Covertino, this time on marimba.

UNCHARTED TERRITORY

A sotto voce “o yeah“, and Owens veers off into the hitherto uncharted territory of southern soul, for ‘Burn It All’, yet another notch in his bedpost successfully countered. With his voice all asimmer, like an Edinburgh Bil Withers, this is a horn heavy canter into town, stacks of Stax appeal, and a surprisingly funky strut, negotiating clavinet and wah wah guitar along the way. Oo oo backing vocals gild this lily and I never knew he had it in him! So much so, it is almost a wrench as it ends, sending us back outside, now definitely to the higher slopes. I’m thinking Raton, NM, as we know it snows there, courtesy Townes Van Zandt.

Face The Storm (The Buffalo) is a bluesy lope that conjures up the plight of such beasts in that snow. The rhythm is as weary as the lyric, trudging relentlessly ahead. The sleeve notes sadly disabuse my notion around location, but, I don’t care. Sinner Of Sinners is a cautionary tale, a dark tale from a dark place, as Owens puts it: “I don’t know you and you don’t know me“. You have to hope he doesn’t, or at least the fictional protagonist. Set to stripped back acoustica, glorious guitar and stand up bass, with distorted fiddle. it presents an old school bad guy, with or without a conscience hidden away in his saddlebags.

CONNECTING PATTERNS

If I were looking for a connecting pattern between all these songs, this sort of confirms there is none, that point underlaid by the, thus far, equally unconnected Wall Of Death. Unless this is where the Sinner Of Sinners discovers his conscience, bringing on a black dog of depression. For that is the wall encountered here: “‘The black dog is dead, long live the black dog“. Against a lyric-contrary rolling barrelhouse piano line, a swirly honky tonk rollick, where ‘bones bone and saxes honk, Owens voice offers an oddly matter of fact narrative. With imagery of lion tamers, clowns and the trapeze, we get also the first hint here of Owen’s fairground ancestry. Never has the black dog seemed both so intoxicating and enticing. And terrifying.

In case you missed the words for the arrangement in the track before, A Divine Tragedy spells it all out, against a backdrop of divorce, a boozy bartime lament, down, defeated and in his cups. Once more, given that this is the mood Owens inhabits best, so too does his chosen genre. Dauntingly sad, it is, obviously, wonderful, the slow burn build of orchestration and brass a thing of no small wonder, as organ and piano lay out the scant options. A highlight in a disc packed with highlights, I, not for the first time, find some Roy Orbison comparisons, in mood if not vocal register.

SPIRITS LIFTED

Needing a lift, after that onslaught, it is Spirit Of Us, deigned to lift mood and spirits. An old song, reprised from Gas, Food & Lodging, Part 2, all of 21 years ago, it is a much more delicate bloom, with Covertino adding subtle shards of vibraphone, and, even if it sounds sad, it isn’t really. Or that much.

Final song, Tame The Lion takes us back to the carney, invoking the promised essence of Ambrose Salvona, an ancestor of Owens, a emigrant from Italy, and an actual lion tamer: “In the footesteps of the lion tamer, I have walked all muy life. With his ghost beside me, the lion tamer by my side“. Chockful of metaphor, some of Owens’ own lions have been external, others internal, and it is striking imagery. With clipped guitars and brass, it reprises the Muscle Shoals ambience offered earlier, especially with the never more Spencer Oldham electric piano, and rounds out the album with finesse, a guitar riffing chunky notes to the close.

LAYING DOWN A HEFTY GAUNTLET

2025 seems to be a year in which country and Americana are laying down a hefty gauntlet, judging on output thus far. Is it not time we finally accept and embrace Owens as one of the bigger hitters, homegrown talent able to hold his own with the best of the USA (or, as here, Italy.) He’s been around for a couple of decades, slowly and surely making ground, if still unbeknownst to most. Minding I have said this before, will this be the record to change that? I hope so; he deserves it.

Here is My Beloved Hills, with the exquisite mix of Scottish sentiment and Italian imagery, filtered through sounds of New Mexico:

Dean Owens online: Website / Facebook / Bluesky / Instagram

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