REVIEW: DEAN OWENS – RIDGELINE (THE RIDGE TRILOGY VOL 2) (2024)

Driving to work this morning, it was wet, cold and generally unpleasant. It was also a Monday.

As I tried to navigate the bizarre journey through Birmingham’s hinterland, where an eight-mile journey routinely takes an hour, “The Ridgeline” was playing.

The second in the trilogy of EPs that Dean Owens is releasing ahead of the next album, this one follows July’s glorious “Ghost Walking”.

Strikingly similar to his work around “The Sinners Shrine”, with one key difference. These are made in Italy and not the Texas border.

Working again with Producer Don Antonio, the opener “Light This World” has ambition in abundance, the strings wash over you with a welcoming warmth and when he sings “I found what I was looking for” then the path to redemption, it seems, was worth travelling.

And speaking of travel, on that journey this morning, “On The Ridge” had a gentle, calming quality – it was needed -, almost soul in parts, Owens speaks of finding a place in the hills, and that full range of his sound is there again in the guitar work.

“Come With Me” has an intro that suggests a sense of foreboding. It’s slow, eerie and like the rest of them, it’s like a soundtrack to a film that’s playing in your imagination, for example when you’re in a traffic jam….

As has become the way on these things Owens includes a demo, in a similar way to how these things used to be – how I used to enjoy singles before Spotify ruined music (the irony, of course, is I’m listening to Spotify to write this). On this “The Buzzard And The Crow’ is more traditional folk in sound, but Owens is better than a mere cliche and this stripped-down version has haunting harmonies as he continues to push the envelope.

Indeed, since the last one came out, something has happened in that I’ve seen Owens play a rare Midlands show. At that one, he played with just a trumpet player, rather than the Stone Buffalo Band, but if the sound was different, the skill remains.

At his best – and he’s rarely anywhere else – Owens has the ability to transport you anywhere, certainly away from the drizzle of the West Midlands autumn, and “Ridgeline” is no different. It is stunning stuff from a man who sees stunning as merely normal.

Rating 9/10