Just what the doctor ordered, Dean Owens releases a live in the studio set, in time for Christmas, an act of hospitality that should see him in good stead, making him, at least, a good boy in the ATB eye.

TEX-MEX GLASWEGIANA

Yup, one of the good guys, Dean Owens has been plying his increasingly Tex-Mex hued Glaswegiana for a number of years now, hitting a sweet spot of late, somewhere between Leith (I know) and the Rio Grande. But if there is one thing that the recent run of albums has failed to exhibit, it is his regular band, the Sinners. For reasons of geography and circumstance, with albums emanating from Tucson and/or Italy, the band tended to stay behind in Blighty, which, as anyone who has ever caught them knows, fails to address what a stellar bunch they are, and the calibre of their precision play.

TORCH, TWANG & TRUMPET

A well-honed concoction of torch, twang and trumpet, The Sinners consist Craig Ross, on electric guitar and bvs, Adam McMillan on double bass and bvs, with Pip Cardwell tackling the brass. Add in Owens’ plaintive moan, characterful songs and acoustic guitar, and, believe me, you don’t and won’t need the expected drums. Really. You may not even actually notice their absence. I didn’t, and this is my job. Or indeed the audience, as, that apart, this is, I guess, their current stage show, intros and countdowns included.

APPLICABLE SPECTRALITY

Hopeless Ghosts is a song from Owen’s much appreciated collab with Calexico, featured both on the Desert Trilogy of EPs and on 2022’s Sinner’s Shrine. If there the drums of Covertino and some lush steel guitar are the calling cards, here, stripped back, it is far more fragile, shaky, even, a hand held camera of found footage. Echo drenched electric guitar accompanies Owen’s languid strum, the trumpet affecting the applicable spectrality. Owens’ voice is perfect for his material, a scuffed memento of trails well travelled. With a muted yay to close some of the stanzas, am I allowed to say I prefer it to the more lavish original?

Sticking with the Trilogy, Arizona jangles in with a lopsided swagger, his bandmates well up to adding desert weary additional vocals. Losh, it’s a beauty, not least as Ross and Cardwell ply parallel solo textures. The bass? Perfect! My Beloved Hills moves forward to last year’s Spirit Ridge, and if Owens has ever sounded more dejected, for this song of homesick reminiscence, that I have yet to hear. Now, I’m all for the layered productions applied then, but, jings, these tunes sound just so sad without all that polish. Sinner Of Sinners comes from the same set, and is more of a lovely same, a dustbowl confessional, awash with images in jumpy monochrome.

EERIE BIG SKY & BLACK CLOUDS

Onward through New Mexico and a second 1,2,3,4, this most Townes-ey of Owens’ oeuvre, and, if anyone is unfamiliar with this singer/songwriter, it strikes me this recording would be a damn fine start. Maybe functioning on a degree of trancelike automatic pilot, it is almost a shock to next hear, without an audience, Owens introducing the next song by name, but it certainly drums home the live aspect of this set, and I’m glad it was seen fit to reflect that and include the spoken word. The song, Face The Storm, is one of his eeriest, all big sky and black clouds gathering. Ross is on the sort of twang central that few can fully accommodate convincingly; indeed, I’m getting a strong whiff of Jimmy Wilsey, Chris Isaak’s right hand man.

Strangers Again is an older song, much older, appearing first as far back as 2001. Cardwell replicates the fiddle part for horn, and it works well. It’s odd, trumpet, for so long anathema in anything much outside jazz, and with jazz seldom bothering lovers of folk and roots derived Americana, suddenly now, like cello, and with clarinet surely next to follow, it has become all the rage. I guess it is Owens’ buddies, Calexico, who must shoulder that responsibility, maybe, over here, with Chumbawamba too. I now can’t get enough of this once loathed instrument, and it is a delight to hear it so solidly at the core of Owen’s importance.

A GOOD OLD WHISTLE

Boxing Shorts is a song from Owens’ 2023 album with Will Kimbrough and Nelson Hubbard, Pictures. A slighter song, the joy is more in the narrative than the melody, the words tumbling out like an early Ken Loach rewrite of the Rocky Balboa story. Next, and as any follower of Owens knows, he likes a good old whistle, and it is with his pursed lips that The Rain Never Lands starts and finishes, trumpet and guitar sparring across him. No vocal, just a “whistlemental”, if you will, coaxing out all the available Morricone.

Not heard it before? Track down the second disc of El Tiradito, the double album of offcuts and outtakes from the Sinners Shrine/Desert Trilogy Sessions. Described by Owens as “an instrumental soundtrack for an imaginary western”, that disc is a gloriously OTT mash of Sergio Leone and Quentin Tarrantino soundscapes. As is the song here, if with a lower pixel count, making it, again, even more effective.

A CONCENTRATED REDUCTION

Light This World and Spirit Of Us maintain the high standards, with all these versions faithful to their originals, yet bringing a new drive and a sense of direction that is possibly more focussed, given the reduced format. This is actually the strength of the set. Like trumpet, I am getting to love acoustic stand up bass more with every hearing, and McMillan can be added to the expanding list of best current UK folk and country providers of the same, like John Parker and Ben Nicholls.

Land Of The Hummingbird is perhaps one of my favourite of Owens’ desert songs. But how might it fare without the sultry additional vocal of Gaby Moreno? Or Sergio Mendoza’s latino percussion, for that matter? Remarkably well, actually, it only an issue if you demand or expect either, it no less textured without.

And so to another favourite, another old one from when he was just the Man From Leith, Cardwell’s trumpet now applying shades of John Barry to this exquisitely nostalgic song of home thought from abroad. (Memo here to self, somehow get tickets, hell or high water, for the upcoming tour.) Of similar vintage, audience favourite, The Night Johnny Cash Played San Quentin gets an airing. “A true story“, he states, which may or not be the case, but it could be. From his Cash Back project, songs inspired, one way or the other, by the Man in Black, and, vocal differences or not, it reeks of Cash in overall construction. Here, even with background and unobtrusive brass, you could swear the Tenessee Three, or two of ’em anyway, were in the house.

ESSENTIAL

For what feels much more than just a marketing decision, there is even a new song here, Road Of Diamonds, which features more lonesome stranger style whistling as it opens. After the whimsy of the older song ahead it, it is firmly back in the desert groove, auguring well for future releases. (To be fair, however much I like the Johnny Cash themed song, it feels a bit bolted on here, and I might have skipped its inclusion).

This fits far more comfortably, and acts as the beginning of the wind down. And, with the Kimborough co-write, Southern Wind between it and closer, After The Rain, the momentum is restored. After The Sun may have been on Sinner’s Shrine, but is actually a revision of a much older song, Shine Like The Road. The Sinners sit this one out, the performance, for it is, ends with just Owens and his guitar. Blimmin’ marvellous!

At the risk of being overly directive, I would say this album an essential sampler for what makes this gifted troubadour tick; get hold of this disc and now! And if you bought it as the trickle of pre-existing EPs, a standard DO MO, buy it again, it’s pretty.

LIVE

Here’s the band and Southern Wind, if from a show 3 1/2 years ago;

Dean Owens: Website

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