News: Girls
Christopher Owens tells us he's set to release country music record
Photography Aaron Brown
Girls frontman Christopher Owens says he’s written a batch of country songs which he intends to release at a later date. Speaking to The Stool Pigeon about his love of the oft-maligned genre, Owens revealed: “There are a group of songs that are meant to be recorded and presented in a country music format.
“That’s a very wide window when you think about it. You’ve got ’50s country which was kinda folk, then you’ve got ’60s country which had a hint of psychedelia in it, and up to a lot of the present day stuff which is really gung-ho, balls-to-the-wall rock’n’roll almost. But I guess what it means is you’re not gonna hear a synthesiser, it won’t be so experimental. It’s like a back-to-basics record.”
“I mean, when radio was invented there were two kinds of music on there were three kinds of music you could hear in America on air and they were blues, country and jazz. And rock’n’roll is just country music and the blues smashed together. So for me it’s kind of a big deal. All my favourite early, early songwriters that were playing with the craft of writing the pop song, they’re country singers you know.”
Owens was raised as part of the notorious Children of God cult before running away to Texas as a teenager, and has been catching up with pop cultural history ever since. It’s a past that informs his approach to music even to this day: “I know I’m really behind with these things. But I try to spend time with these genres and learn what it is that makes current music what it is now, or what it is that everyone takes for granted, in a way, having listened to it growing up.”
“I read Kurt Cobain’s diaries and in that he talks about knowing what kind of music he wanted to play as a teenager. He basically said, ‘I don’t wanna sound like my parents’ music’ — which was like country and soft rock — ‘but I like my funny auntie’s music’, which was The Beatles and psychedelic stuff. But he also knew the cool kids at school were listening to the headbanger stuff, so he decided to mix his auntie’s Beatles songs with the heavy stuff, and that’s where he got his style of grunge.”
“And for me not growing up [like other people did], I do know as an adult sit around and spend a year or two getting into these genres and trying to figure out what it’s about.” Owens’ third album with Girls, Father, Son, Holy Ghost, is due on September 12.
