Owen Young, a mind steeped in the harmonies of law and fine art, unfurls “These Painted Flowers,” an EP blooming with the thorny beauty of the heart after the pandemic. It’s Americana, but not the porch swing kind—more like the kind where you stumble on a forgotten well, and peer in, seeing your reflection ripple back at you with new, confusing angles.
Seven tracks. Seven stops along a winding road. You have “It Seems So Simple,” where love begins as a child’s drawing of a sun, only to find the contours shift and the colors smudge as we experience the full range of intimacy. Suddenly it’s not all simple. But then there is an echo within those changes, and a beautiful simplicity is uncovered. “If I Drove Down,” on the other hand, feels like standing in an empty house you used to share, each room whispering the absence of someone who is simply not returning, the paint now chipping away. It’s the static on a long-distance phone line, the echo of a laugh you can’t quite place, a raw longing. Then we jump into, “Keepin’ Bad Company”, which features guest artist, Tia McGraff. This track pulls in with gritty vocals as we’re reminded some loves aren’t picnics on the green, they are slow car crashes and neither party knows how to put it in park, just the slide into dangerous territory, seemingly helpless to do otherwise.
Then, a reminder to breathe, and feel what is right before us now, “Lightning Don’t Strike Twice” acts as a gentle push reminding us to see the faces we love in the light that exists, fleeting as it may be. “These Painted Flowers”, which lends its title to the EP, is all gentle resignation and a kind of bittersweet acceptance. The act of moving on from those that we can’t quite figure out, those that aren’t ours. Then, to turn on its heels we take an ancient route in “Wayfaring Stranger (Traditional)” with guest vocals from Beaux Young. A journey for the soul now, reaching back to the songs that have come before us as we imagine a greater crossing beyond our current understanding of place, and life. It all rounds out, finally, with “Epilogue,” a reflective piece, picking up the threads, the discarded petals. A strange mix of homecoming and beginning to go, finally moving, maybe for the first time?
Musically, it’s familiar, but Owen Young doesn’t settle for just “familiar”. It’s in the way the acoustic guitar bends under the weight of his reflections; it is in the cadence of his lyrics as he struggles through this emotional landscape that we suddenly connect to these feelings that we may not have had the space to feel ourselves. It’s all beautifully messy and relatable, like the experience of stumbling onto an amazing thrift store painting that you’ve simply got to bring home with you, no matter what the colour scheme in your home.
The truth about life seems to exist in the space between these tracks; in the spaces of regret, acceptance, forgiveness, and the eternal journey towards grace, always moving.
