Well the reviews of At The Races continue to roll in.

Below is a link and the text of a review from the Los Angeles indie
record company and zine "Shmat". It even has a picture of the album
cover!
-Zack

http://www.shmat.com/reviews.php


Well, well, and well met, Owen. Is this just another 2 - guys - with -
a - 4- track - in - a - box - submission that we have here? Perhaps.
After all the genesis of this two person lo-fi combo out of San
Francisco, as stated in their press sheet, is a 4-track received for
Xmas in the mid nineties.. probably near what you could say was the
heyday of Guided By Voices, Lou Barlow's "-doh" bands, and Pavement's
pioneering low quality recordings for the masses. It's like all of
the sudden when people saw Bob Pollard's stuff get 5 stars in Rolling
Stone they realized that poor saps (like me) would pay for music
recorded in someone's living room. It's not a bad thing, but that and
the internet (god bless it's soul) spawned a host of these types of
projects. The ones we get tend to be hit and miss, always depending
on my mood, how much coffee I've had, whether it's raining outside,
etc.

Anyhow, Owen's At The Races is 15 songs of a multitude of styles
including folk, rap, jazz, old english balladeer, and classic rock.
Of all those different styles, I dig the mellow folky and spare stuff
like the "Better Days Than Then" and "Burn That Bridge". The classic
rock stuff did not grab me, but some of the rap thingies were very
funny. In general, not inventive enough to be Beck though vaguely
reminsicent of the One Foot In The Grave stuff. The showpiece is the
weird lyrics that they have thoughtfully included in the booklet.
They're pretty godamn funny, if not slightly brilliant. A short
selection reads like the schizophrenic's guide to writing a pop
song: "There once was a mighty geat / Whose courage and strength
saved the land / He slayed the dragon Grendel / With nigh but his
bare hands" and "I think of your beauty at the barn at the on ramp to
the highway". And my favorite: "It's like a Rubick's Cube / You gotta
solve that sh*t". With poets like these guys, who needs Shakespeare?


- review by BY (11.2.03)