Owen Danoff
Twelve Stories
Reviewed by: Jane Roser
I can always gauge how good an album is by my friend’s reactions when I have it as background music playing in my car. Usually it’s tuned out when the conversation starts, but D.C. singer/songwriter Owen Danoff’s first full-length album, Twelve Stories, received several queries of “who is this? I really like it.” As many times as I’ve listened to this album, it never fails to accomplish what I look for in a remarkable piece of work: it has guts, it has elegance and I can relate to the themes and emotions conveyed by the songwriter.
Funded through a Kickstarter campaign whose top supporter was actor Nathan Fillion (Castle, Serenity, Firefly), and with an abundance of guest musicians including Rami Jaffee (the Wallflowers, Foo Fighters), Twelve Stories is a thoughtful, refined musical masterpiece. Each track tells a story, whether it be a quiet road trip allowing pause for self-reflection or an ode to the City of Angels, the songs flow organically from the album’s opening monologue to it’s conclusion.
“Never Been Kissed” was the first single released and one of the most requested songs at Danoff’s live shows. It’s a fun, catchy tune you can’t help but sing along to and really, who wouldn’t want to be this girl: “They can call me crazy, another hopeless fool, but they’ve never been kissed, they’ve never been kissed by you.” One of my favorite personal touches is the little laughs Danoff subtly injects into a few of these songs. They add personality and a human element to punctuate the lyric.
“I Wish I Knew Better” is an honest, bittersweet song and one of my favorites for the images it conveys such as “the ghost of the smell of perfume” or the recording Danoff made on his phone of a slowly falling rain shower and people talking on the streets of the West Village which was then used as the tune’s intro. Danoff wrote this “completely intellectually within three hours while sitting in my friend’s apartment.” The final verse hits a nerve every time I hear it because it’s just so relatable: “this time tomorrow, I’ll be away, on the long roads that lie from NY to LA; chasing a lover that I can’t get to stay, and I wish I knew better. This time tomorrow, I’ll be so far, from the memories we made between people and cars, but people don’t change, they just change where they are. And I wish I knew better than that.”
Twelve Stories is an inspirational and compelling volume of work; overwhelmingly romantic, at times lonely, wildly cathartic and timeless. John Mayer once said, “life is a beautiful thing. Pack a bag, make a playlist. Watch the world. Don’t speak. Just listen.” So include this album in your playlist, get in your car, put on the CD, watch the world go by and don’t speak, just listen.
Rating: Iconic
