We previewed Mike Kinsella’s new Owen record this spring with “Bad Blood,” a promising, genre-errant follow-up to 2011’s Ghost Town, yet (upon hearing all of L’Ami du Peuple today) by no means a favorite from the set. Turns out there are too many others to choose from: opening track “I Got High” and “Love Is Not Enough” strike a familiar personal/professional chord, while this single, “Coffin Companions,” splits the difference into bittersweet longing for both reverie and oblivion. “In the past I’ve stifled a bunch of my influences and leaned on a couple consistently, but this time I just let each song happen as I heard them and had a lot of fun trying some new things,” says Kinsella, a noted Smiths fan calling himself the “boy with two thorns in his side” on this one. “Of all the coffins in all the dreadful corners of the world,” he goes on, invoking the morbid wit of Morrissey before a welcome retreat to the song’s romantic center: “You chose mine, and I, yours.” Hear it above and stream the album at Spin.
