Back in the 1990s, Therapy? reckoned that “happy people have no stories,” and, frankly, they were probably right.
In Owen Riegling’s case, though, the stories seem to have come with success. The Canadian has said this record is about “figuring out who the hell I am outside of my hometown,” and that tension runs right through “In The Feeling.” This is a record about movement, distance, memory, love, family, leaving, returning, and all the stuff you think you have sorted until life reminds you otherwise.
“Phone Call From Home” sets the scene perfectly. It is not just because the lyrics namecheck the New Jersey Turnpike, Bon Jovi songs and The Boss himself that it immediately transports you somewhere blue-collar and road-worn. It is the whole thing: the widescreen sweep, the yearning, the sense of someone looking out of a window and seeing their past in the reflection.
“Rest Of My” keeps that feeling going. When Riegling sings about hearing a screen door creak in the corner of his mind, you can almost see the thing. This is ready to take “Thunder Road,” surely. Just him and the girl, heading somewhere, anywhere, because staying still feels worse.
“Taillight This Town” is more evocative still, but just as full of small-town frustration. Riegling has a gift for making ordinary places sound mythic, and “Miles Away,” though a little more modern country in its shape, still refuses to become too idyllic. There is always a shadow around the edges here, always the sense that escape costs you something.
That becomes clearer on “Same Blood.” “You got the brains, but I got the car” is a superb line, but beneath the smartness is something more painful: the business of growing up, moving on, and watching adolescence and family begin to drift into different rooms. “Born Again” sounds a little more contented, and even with its harmonica wail, it feels like the soundtrack for star-crossed lovers everywhere.
Then, all of a sudden, some blues breaks out on “Going Missing.” It looks for peace and solitude, and it gives the album another colour. “Love Hate Love,” meanwhile, has an urgency about the delivery and real class in the way it is put together. The chorus is an absolute beauty, the sort that arrives fully formed and stays there.
“Mailbox” might be the heart of the whole thing. “If you don’t want to die alone, give your heart to a girl and turn your heart to a home” is one of those lines that sounds simple until you realise it has quietly summed up half the record. For all the travelling, the searching and the restlessness, “In The Feeling” keeps circling back to the same question: where do you belong when the place you came from no longer fits quite the same?
“Last Thing On My Mind” answers that from the road. I read a lot of rock’n’roll biographies, and touring appears to be a right ballache. This sounds like the words of one who knows. There is no glamour here, not really, just the ache of distance and the things you miss when everyone else thinks you are living the dream.
By the time the title track arrives, the desire to return home feels less like nostalgia and more like survival. That is perhaps the cleverest trick here. This is not a record that romanticises leaving, nor one that pretends staying would have solved everything. It wrestles with both.
It is noticeable, too, that the last few songs are more sparse. “Anything But Me” is a stunning close. “I’d have given anything to be but me” is a hell of a line, and you can only hope Riegling is happier in his own skin now. Perhaps being newly married will help. Perhaps so will the fact that he has delivered one of the records of the year so far.
Either way, “In The Feeling” is magnificent. Music works best when it tells the truth, even when that truth is messy, conflicted and full of bruises. Owen Riegling has done exactly that here.
Rating: 9.5/10
