New Release - Craig Owens "With Love" EP

Craig Owens. Maybe you've heard of him?  He's the lead singer for the bands Chiodos and Cinematic Sunrise along with being one of three vocalists for super group Isles & Glaciers, and now he has this, a solo project. If they haven't already, someone needs to tell the guy to calm down. Don't get me wrong, Cinematic Sunrise is alright and I can tolerate him on Isles & Glaciers, but his latest solo release entitled With Love makes me wonder if he's running out.

The record begins with "Cardigans and Swing Sets", and before Craig finishes the first line my disappointment begins. An extremely soft piano is playing as Craig sings, "And I feel so alone," in some sort of whisper/cry combination. I tell myself that it's just one line with some cheesy gimmick, but Craig does the entire song like that. And maybe that's what they wanted - maybe he's supposed to sound like he's about to cry, because that's just how lonely Craig Owens is. I'm not buying it, the lyrics are nothing for him to slit his wrists over.

I view the lyrics present in the track "Products of Poverty" as sarcasm, because Craig talks about having everyone hate him, doing coke off of study material, and not believing in himself. He's got thousands of fans who would love to be friends with him; the world isn't out to get him as he makes it seem in the song. Just seems like three minutes of sob to me. It doesn't help that guest vocalist Stephen Christian totally outdoes Craig. Craig's voice is cracky and off-tune, but Christian sounds smooth and peaceful and very nice.

The fourth track, entitled "A Poem by Adam Wolfson", is extremely laughable, not for it's material but for being pathetic and unfunny. I wasn't so critical of the album until this track, but when I heard Craig trying to get a cheap laugh out of cussing I just lost all hope. If you want to have fun and joke around, that's fine, but don't try to pass this off as a seven track EP and then fill it up with crap like this. Anybody who actually purchased this CD had to waste 99 cents for something so immature and that angers me.

The song "Big Apple Big Heart" is notable for having one lyric that I felt was pretty good. The song is obviously about someone leaving his current life to live in New York and try to make it as a musician. Craig sings, "I turn to my left, I see my mother crying/She says to me, 'Why couldn't you have been a doctor or a lawyer?'" which I do feel is a good example of human emotion. I can appreciate that, it's just a shame the rest of the song is extremely generic, boring acoustic music.

The rest of the tracks that I didn't mention are just boring, poorly produced acoustic love songs. Nothing more to them than that. In "My Love", Craig repeats the lyric "Cause you can change/Oh, if you want, you can change/If you want/You can change/Oh, if you want, you can always change" about three times, and that's just grand.

I know this review and my thoughts on the album probably seem extremely unprofessional, and I should probably apologize for that, but I honestly believe this is the worst album I've listened to all year. Craig's lyrics are extremely terrible, and it doesn't help that for most of the album he's only accompanied by an acoustic guitar. No track is worth more than one listen. Offensive as it may be, I hope this EP's sales tank. Something needs to show Craig four projects are four projects too many.