Owls
Two

I immediately satisfy your curiosity: Noel Gallagher decapitated and crying blood like a little Madonna is Mike Kinsella's contribution to the cover, symbolizing a blow to his older brother Tim; why? We are dealing with ironic and brilliant characters who love to take themselves seriously, so who knows. It is thanks to Tim Kinsella instead, at the top right (but it could also be the one at the bottom right, I'm asking for clarification) for the postmodern collage dedicated to Vanessa Williams, the first Black Miss America - who was later stripped of the title due to lesbian photos - and Traci Lords, a minor porn actress in the early eighties, now retired: a tribute to two icons of American sexual scandalism that instead of safeguarding the adolescent Tim, gave him evidently unforgettable moments.

The cover is split into four, and four are the members of the group who worked on it in total independence because - according to T. Kinsella - they are all very eccentric and artistic each on their own: the brothers, Sam Zurick who here plays the bass in a cerebral strumming that has never been heard - neither on an emo album, nor on a math album, nor on a post-hardcore album, nor on a post-rock album, nor on a Touché Amoré album, nor on a La Dispute album - and Victor Villareal, whose virtuoso, extravagant distorted fingerstyle we are accustomed to from certain works by Joan Of Arc, Ghosts and Vodka, and the gem Make Believe. Add Van Bohlen, who is not there, and you've made Cap'n Jazz: Cap'n Jazz have almost nothing to do with this album, but the chorus of Ancient Stars Seed... (dots not mine, but unfortunately and mysteriously in the titles of all the tracks on the album) is the closest thing to Cap'n Jazz since the days of Cap'n Jazz.

Cover split into four, independence, and eccentricity: someone might argue that this is not the best spirit for working in a group. Yet it is.

Indeed, it is because Two is a struggle of thirteen years, an achievement, after the already very beautiful debut, but the cohesion in perfect eurythmy of the four embattled parts here works as rarely, and rarely does a work feel so edgy, dark, challenging, yet catchy, pop (almost), and songwriting so emotional yet so cynical: Why Oh Why... says, for example, it's curious how you assume your experience of the world is the world; the lullaby Four Works of Art... at the start sounds like one of the most earnest things by Motorpsycho but played by an emo band mimicking a stoner band, with an inexplicable bass; Oh No, Don't... is what I would expect from a new Slint album with grooves and the demented singing of the guy from Joan Of Arc, who in I'm Surprised... fortunately shows that he still hasn't understood, at forty and with a belly, the difference between a catchy melody and the broken chant of a preadolescent who is beginning to change his voice and still sings nursery rhymes - assuming the difference exists, since certain emo is infantilism, power chords, and nursery rhymes, just ask Mac McCaughan; The Lion..., and not only The Lion..., reminds of one of those hieratic and crooked Polvo ballads - like Fast Canoe - and has lyrics I could have written at six years old, but not in English; in This Must Be How... Villareal’s arpeggiating creativity takes control, as practically everywhere on the first album, but this time, more than in the predecessor, aided by a rhythm section that not even This Town Needs Guns - and who are This Town Needs Guns if not humble disciples of Ours? - to avert that sense of flattening which is both the bane and delight of half the discography of Joan Of Arc and Owls 1.

Two is a very rare commodity, a relentlessly alternative, radical album that does not strive to please anyone: not the Midwest nostalgics, not the new wave throwing panties at Touché Amoré and La Dispute, not the Joan Of Arc fans (because they practically don’t exist, otherwise, a little bit to them); not those craving for a second coming of American Football, who meanwhile rightly self-celebrate, merchandise, and monetize the glories of the nineties; not even the post-rockers and mathematicians, because that is a crowd seeking sound and instead, this is a skeletal, direct, barely seasoned album. Yet, to these and to all the others, Two points out a new way.