Love Out of Lemons by Bones Owens
‘Love Out of Lemons’ by Bones Owens
Caleb Owens, “Bones” to the larger world, doesn’t mind traveling down the middle of the rock ‘n’ roll road. He’s so unpretentious that he might consider the very use of the word “unpretentious” a mite too fancy.
His second album, Love Out of Lemons, puts Owens squarely (or foursquarely) amid the classicists—the Black Keys, the Record Company, Danko Jones—whose electric-guitar noise mostly avoids beer-commercial territory and almost entirely avoids strenuous assertions (cf. Kid Rock) about the primacy and purity of electric-guitar noise.
As on his self-titled 2021 debut album, Owens here wears the AOR influences of his rural-Missouri childhood as easily as he might wear Levi’s he’s owned for a decade, plus a tee shirt emblazoned with an AC/DC logo. And, as on that debut, Owens and producer Paul Moak develop a sound as suitable for an echo-prone arena as for a backyard hoedown.
If the results don’t have the buzzsaw thrill of AC/DC riff-o-ramas, they also don’t have the overinflated drama of Bon Jovi or Carrie Underwood, two artistes who have usefully employed Owens. Instead, “Summer Skin” has the mellow solidity of Tom Petty circa Wildflowers, “For Keeps” finds some of the old Black Crowes-style voodoo, and “Higher Than I Wanna Be” twangs with a touch of Ryan Adams’s regret.
The coolness Petty and Adams did and can convey as vocalists comes across from Owens, too, alongside a pleasure in melody that isn’t very far from the way Paul Rodgers would ease himself into the flow of the less bluesy side of Bad Company.
Owens isn’t nearly so distinctive as Petty or Rodgers, or Adams for that matter, but he’s a steady journeyman in every creative aspect. Love Out of Lemons is a diner hamburger served hot and fast, meant to be enjoyed just as simply and quickly.
Get Love Out of Lemons at Amazon here.
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