Mark Owen - review

The omens don’t look too promising. A new CD from a refugee of a once huge pop group who, after initial solo success, saw ever diminishing returns and the eventual parting of the ways with their record label. Then, after a hiatus out in the wilderness, a comeback album on their own record label!

This could have been as terrible a disappointment as Melanie C's latest work, Beautiful Intentions, but thankfully Mark Owen’s How The Mighty Fall is the finest solo record he has made. And, against all the odds, this could be the surprise quality album of the year.

Who would have expected Mark to deliver a third solo album consisting of ten beautifully crafted, inventive, melodic songs that defy pigeonholing. Owen displays an admirable ignorance of current music trends in the contemporary scene. This is not a marketing department’s album – it isn’t even niche-savvy. It’s a disarmingly personal statement that speaks volumes of the former Take Thatter's true enthusiasm for music rather than success.

It is a wide-ranging work of many diverse elements, burgeoning with delights, but one that Owen manages to fuse into a cohesive and stimulating whole.

The opening track, ‘They Do’, begins with a series of positive life affirmations, “Choose a song / Your heart can sing,” Mark says. The jaunty piano and the guitar wall of sound support the upbeat, optimistic vibe, before a melancholic clarinet begins to undercut the mood and the lyrics become counterbalanced by a more worldly-wise sentiment - “When you lose your way / When all that you know turn on you”.

The sway of age and experience continues with the acoustic ballad ‘Sorry Lately’. Textbook song structure and a compelling but gentle melody, it is a great song whose nearest lineage would probably be Move’s ‘Flowers in the Rain’.

‘Makin’ Out’ starts as the kind of chirpy ditty that could easily grate, but as the track progresses, the sheer charm and abandon of Owen wins you over. There is more than a smattering of Britpop here, but before you can ask ‘Who the hell does Britpop these days?’, the quirkiness and eccentricity of ‘How The Mighty Fall’ goes off the scale.

From the honky-tonk piano opening of ‘Waiting For The Girl To Call’, we are in a surreal world where Parklife is imagined by Chas and Dave rather than Blur. It’s this kind of boldness to experiment that underlines that Mark is making and funding the album he wants to do, without an eye on a selling potential.

It’s either naivety or a refreshing lack of cynicism that guides this album: the exuberance of the performances urges even the flintiest of hearts to err on that latter view and enjoy the ride.

Despite the initial, almost funereal organ chords of ‘Believe In The Boogie’, it is the kind of upbeat track that is as unstoppable as a runaway express train heading downhill on an icy morning.

The lyrics are temptingly biographical: “From the Albert Hall / To the Uni ball / How the mighty fall” sings Mark, hinting at the career crossroads as he leaves the success of youth, but tapping into that sense of vulnerability the public have always attached to him. Vocally, Damon Albarn seems an influence, whereas the song pitches itself somewhere between The Futurehead’s ‘Hounds of Love’ and a Motown stomper.

Similarly, odd bedfellows are the funk elements that nudge the electro-sounds of ‘3:15’ – and that’s before the Muppet-like backing chorus kicks in.

One of the album’s more earnest tracks, ‘Hail Mary’, a glistening ballad in the vein of George Harrison, reveals the maturity of Owen as a songwriter. Vocal influences of early Bowie and a musical arrangement that suggest a lighter Radiohead are indicative of the breadth and ambition of the album.

Like a torch song that could have made it into the Moulin Rouge film soundtrack, ‘Stand’ is the anthemic, emotional closer of the album. A fiercely committed performance imbued with Owen’s natural sincerity ensures an engaging mature finale rather the bombastic, stadium-sized fakery of his one-time band mate Robbie Williams.

Despite the energetic, frenetic ‘Come On’, the tenth and final track, Mark Owen will never play gigs on the scale of Knebworth, but there is more musical integrity and self-realisation in this album than Robbie’s million could ever buy.

Mark Owen has chosen to avoid the trap of the easy options, preferring to explore his own musical path: not only commendable, but the biggest shock is quite how much understated talent Owen possesses that we never noticed before.

Originally published 12th May 2005

Interestingly Mark's material here is not a zillion miles from Take That's 'Shine'