Album Of The Week: Christopher Owens I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair

“Well early in the morning/ At the break of day/ I ain’t got no God/ To whom I pray/ No lord above/ To set me free/ I keep my burdens/ Right here with me.” So began A New Testament, the great 2014 solo album from former Girls frontman Christopher Owens. As someone who famously grew up in the Children Of God cult, spirituality has always been a looming subject in Owens’ music, sometimes as explicit context, sometimes as an ambient presence. Even when he was embracing humanism and aligning himself with the New Atheists, religion lingered in his songs as an adversary, the foil in his secular gospel-rock.

“The music itself is what uplifts you and lets you take care of the burdens,” Owens told me back then, explaining that he enjoyed subverting the old spiritual traditions. At the time, Owens seemed to be doing well. He was healthy, having kicked his heroin addiction. He had a long-term partner and a supportive community around him, who’d helped him create the new LP and were depicted with Owens on the cover. Career-wise, goodwill from the Girls era remained strong, despite the muted reception to his flute-laden prog-folk solo debut Lysandre. But the fervor that greeted Girls never really materialized around A New Testament, and its follow-up Chrissybaby Forever came and went without much hubbub. Eventually Owens moved out of the industry spotlight, holding down a day job and pursuing creative work in more of a weekend warrior fashion with a band somewhat humorously named Curls. He was getting ready to get married and become a stay-at-home dad when things got really, really rough for him.

In an in-depth Guardian interview, he detailed the many struggles that informed his new album I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair. He was badly injured by an SUV while riding his motorcycle, refused medical care partially due to fear of the financial burden, and ended up bedridden for months. He lost his job. His fiancée left him. He was evicted and began living out of his car and a camper, which was then stolen with his cat and favorite guitar inside. At rock bottom, he reconnected with Girls bandmate Chet “JR” White and began plotting a reunion album, but White was in bad shape during initial sessions, and upon returning to his parents’ home to recuperate.

When you’ve been through hell, sometimes you think about heaven. Owens revealed in that Guardian interview that he’s been re-engaging with Christianity lately on his own terms, following a devastating stretch of years by searching for flashes of hope and truth in the pages of scripture. “Maybe there’s something that I do believe,” he said. “Or maybe I believe that it’s not real per se, but it’s important for one’s life. And now that I’ve had a walloping left hook that I didn’t see coming, how do I feel about it all now? I do treasure my upbringing in the Bible. It’s maybe the most valuable thing I have.”

Maybe that’s beautiful to you, or maybe it’s tragic. Either way, Owens’ personal turmoil and spiritual searching has yielded a powerful new batch of songs. I compared A New Testament’s treatment of old gospel tropes to Spiritualized, but its songs weren’t marked by the in-the-gutter desperation that characterizes so much of Jason Spaceman’s best work. I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair, by comparison, finds him ravaged by despair, pushed to the brink. The album comes from a place of deep pain and spiritual searching; even without knowledge of what Owens has been through, you can hear the wear and tear on his soul. Perhaps not coincidentally, it’s the best, most affecting collection of songs he’s released since Girls.

Lead single “I Think About Heaven” is the only song that directly addresses matters of faith. Over light acoustic major-seventh chords and the tumbling rhythm of bongos, it begins with Owens quoting Psalm 42, the basis for the worship song “As The Deer.” As the music locks into a breezy glide, he imagines the afterlife. “My tears have been my both day and night/ Until I see you, what good is my sight?” Owens sings before concluding, “I think about heaven and I smile/ Things don’t seem so bad.” The glimpse into potential paradise is one form of respite on a record often defined by what he’s lost in this life.

I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair begins with “No Good,” an especially Girls-y pop-rock heater. Between explosive drum fills, blazing guitar solos, and sweeping waves of organ, Owens sings to his ex, “Leave me alone, I’m dyin’ here,” and instructs her to “Go on, get lost/ Fuck off, stay gone.” The tracklist ends with “Do You Need A Friend,” a seven-minute epic engulfed in flames. Built around refrains like “People come and people go/ But the loneliness is always the same” and “If you really wanna know/ I’m barely making it through the days,” it’s seasoned with the kinds of unhinged gospel wails I associate with The Dark Side Of The Moon, flashes of the divine breaking through in the midst of life’s unbearable heaviness. Both songs prove Owens has not lost the spark that made him one of his generation’s most beloved indie rock songwriters.

Much of the tracklist reflects that broken state, from the languidly hazy, self-explanatory “White Flag” to the weeping-harmonica rambler “I Know” to the acoustic ballad “This Is My Guitar,” with its cries of “Somebody help me, please!” But Owens is back on his feet now, stable and married, and parts of I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair brim with hope and renewal too. The shimmering, soulful love song “Beautiful Horses” is warmly flirtatious, full of lines like “You could call me daddy/ Yes, I would step up to that/ Go on and tease me/ See how I quickly come back.” On “Distant Drummer,” Owens sings of a guiding star leading him through life’s challenges: “You are the light; I’ve gotta follow.”

No matter which emotional state we find Owens in, he sings with the fragile tenderness that has always made him such a compelling narrator. He can say so much with a few basic chords and simple turns of phrase, though it helps immensely when his songs are boosted by arrangements that summon the power of the 20th century rock canon. Save for “This Is My Guitar,” which brings in indie/pop whisperer Ariel Rechtshaid and Unknown Mortal Orchestra sideman Jacob Portrait, Owens co-produced all tracks with Doug Boehm, who was behind the boards for his first two solo albums and Girls’ swansong Father, Son, Holy Ghost. Most songs feature Curls’ rhythm section Cody Rhodes and Luke Bace, with Derek Barber contributing skillful lead guitar work. They’re a dynamic unit, pivoting from spacious, reverbed-out country-rock to a Jesus And Mary Chain-worthy inferno from one song to the next.

When Girls first came on the scene, it felt like a miracle: Owens had not just persevered through a lifetime of difficult circumstances but emerged with a brilliant, fully-formed creative vision. Knowing what he’s been through since then, I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair feels no less astonishing to me. At its best, the album recaptures the breathtaking splendor of Owens’ greatest work. Artists aren’t guaranteed to regain that spark, and people don’t always bounce back from the kinds of obstacles this guy has faced. Whether by divine inspiration or a triumph of the human spirit, this album has renewed my faith in Christopher Owens.

I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair is out 10/18 via True Panther.