Mike Kinsella has never lacked creative outlets. One advantage to being part of such wide-ranging projects as the spastic, wildly creative (and recently reunited) Cap’n Jazz, indie experimentalists Joan Of Arc and seminal midwestern emo outfit American Football is that it’s easy to compartmentalize your sound when you have many compartments to choose from. Owen has generally been Kinsella’s outlet for quiet, ruminative balladry, wintry finger-picked odes full of shimmering arpeggios and plaintive vocals and enough space between the two for an icy breeze to blow.

But while Ghost Town doesn’t exactly rewrite the core Owen sound, it does push the boundaries a little broader, continuing the sonic expansion that begin with 2009’s New Leaves. “Mother’s Milk Breath” swathes Kinsella’s spare finger-picking in warm string swells and cooing harmony vocals; “No Place Like Home” sees his acoustic guitar slip into strident chording, a swirling xylophone filling the gaps. And the fuzzed out, overdriven electric guitar solo that punches through the finish of “Everyone’s Asleep In The House But Me” might be the most aggressive sound to appear on an Owen recording to date.

Kinsella is rarely a cheery guy on record to begin with, but Ghost Town finds him in some particularly dour places; the navel-gazing self-loathing and crippling uncertainty that pervaded previous Owen tracks finds itself a little more outwardly-directed here: at his late father and their unfinished business, and at the dark spirits of his own making. On opener “Too Many Moons” he promises he’s “not coming home until these demons get bored”; consider the ensuing eight tracks his journey back, with stops along the way at bottle-bottoms (“I Believe”) and dingy basements (“The Armoire”). These demons, they’re not easy to shake, though there’s a perverse pleasure in enjoying Kinsella’s beautifully poetic descriptions of such tortured moments. Perhaps it’s for the best that at times, the beauty overwhelms the pain. And beautiful it is; “Too Many Moons” might be as lovely a track as Kinsella has written. It’s kind of a marvel to think that only now might Kinsella be peaking as a lyricist.

Mike Kinsella’s output as Owen has been nothing if not consistently reliable, and Ghost Town is another worthy addition to the catalog. In searching for the balance between comfort and creativity, and between the haunting and home, Kinsella has managed to steadily and gracefully guide the Owen project in interesting new directions without losing touch with its strengths.

★★★★☆

*This review was composed by Jesse Richman