| Beat Magazine - 4th June 2008 |
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Josh Owen Band Josh Owen Northcote Social Club No, that’s not a typo. You see, this was supposed to be a double launch show for local funk-rocker Owen and R’n’B artist Nessa Morgan. But after Morgan was involved in a car accident (for any fans reading, I’m assured she was only a little shaken) Owen stepped up to the plate, balancing his intended acoustic set with its amplified alter-ego. Of course, an artist could never hope for a better opportunity to showcase their diversity, and Owen picked it up and ran with it. Opening with the breezy groove of latest single Do You Wonder?, it was quickly obvious that (relatively) new percussionist Jason Heerah would be adding a lot of the more exotic flavours to this acoustic Josh Owen brew; his array of hand percussion, while minimal by some standards, was played with impeccable taste. Brother To Brother was, as always, a reliable spirit-lifter, but it was the way Owen played masterfully on his guitar effects (and, I’m betting, some creative tuning) to evoke arid outback landscapes for Has Anyone Seen The Rain? that gave us the evening’s first taste of ‘wow’. The quaint, Jimmy Page-inspired slide guitar interlude Abigail offered a perfect change of tone, before the trio closed the first set with the made-for-festivals newie Summer Sun. Had the show ended here, I would have been impressed enough. But my jaw would have a lot further to drop than that. The Josh Owen band has grown leaps and bounds since the last time I saw them in 2006. Of course, they still epitomise a perfect fusion of chunky riffage and feel-good soul bounce, but there was a certain something else… Something that makes you smirk with anticipated satisfaction and go ‘oh, yeah…’ when a riff is about to reach its payoff; something that makes your knees buckle beneath you when the band gets to that ‘downshift’ in the chord progression. I guess you could say that Josh has found the ‘badass’ edge to his grooves. While it was bassist Luke Hodgson who often put the muscle in said grooves, it was Heerah (now on full kit) who informed us when the band was in full-on rock mode, fattening the riffs with tricky fills not unlike Stewart Copeland. Some notable (identifiable) highlights included the sly, streetwise funk of Money Comes Money Goes, the heavy, slow-cookin’ soul of Get To Know Ya, and the way Owen tastefully built up to the flashy fretwork just before the encore. That encore, by the way, was just Owen, singing his heart out and playing his guitar in an intimate embrace for the smoky, moonlit soul of Burns Low. While the half-full room was fittingly mesmerised, looking around it made me ponder why Owen’s career is, likewise, still on ‘simmer’. He got the chunkin’, shreddin’ aggro for the guys, he got the goofy, huggable charm for the ladies; he got the songs (one for every mood, as this evening proved), he got the voice, and he sure as hell got the right musicians behind him. By rights, Owen’s star should already be burning brightly. JESSE SHROCK View Review Scan |
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