''Owl John'' is the only album by Owl John, the solo musical project by

Frightened Rabbit Frightened Rabbit were a Scottish indie rock band from Selkirk, formed in 2003. Initially a solo project for vocalist and guitarist Scott Hutchison, the final lineup of the band consisted of Hutchison, his brother Grant (drums), Billy Kennedy ...

vocalist and guitarist

Scott Hutchison Scott John Hutchison (20 November 1981 – 9 May 2018) was a Scottish singer, songwriter, guitarist and artist. He was the founding member and primary songwriter of the indie rock band Frightened Rabbit, with whom he recorded five studio albums ...

. It was released on

Atlantic Records Atlantic Recording Corporation (simply known as Atlantic Records) is an American record label founded in October 1947 by Ahmet Ertegun and Herb Abramson. Over its first 20 years of operation, Atlantic earned a reputation as one of the most i ...

on 4 August 2014 (perhaps coincidentally, the date also bein
International Owl Awareness Day
since 2011). The music for the album was written and recorded on the

Isle of Mull The Isle of Mull ( gd, An t-Eilean Muileach ) or just Mull (; gd, Muile, links=no ) is the second-largest island of the Inner Hebrides (after Skye) and lies off the west coast of Scotland in the Council areas of Scotland, council area of Arg ...

, Scotland, in early 2014, with Hutchison working with Frightened Rabbit's Andy Monaghan and Simon Liddell. He then moved to

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

, where the lyrics were written and recorded. Scottish musician Peter Kelly plays drums on the album, which was mastered by Mazen Murad. A further two tracks were recorded for the project but not included on the album: the Christmas song "It Gets Cold", released on Soundcloud under the artist name Christmas John, and "All I Want for Me Is You", which features Ed Harcourt on piano. A short instrumental track credited to Owl John, "Hailstones", was used as the soundtrack for the video piec
''London - Christmas Morning''
in December 2014; it was released as part of an album accompanying the

Neu!Reekie! Neu! Reekie! is an Edinburgh-based literary company and arts production house founded in 2010 by poets Michael Pedersen and Kevin Williamson. They have produced over 200 live shows and published poetry anthologies including ''#UntitledOne'' (2015) ...

poetry compilation ''#UntitledOne'' in 2015. Three music videos were released for songs from the album: "Los Angeles, Be Kind", "Hate Music" and "Red Hand". All were directed by Storme Whitby-Grubb and Charles Gibson. In 2019, Coldplay sampled "Los Angeles, Be Kind" in their song " Champion of the World".

Background and production

The Scottish

indie rock Indie rock is a Music subgenre, subgenre of rock music that originated in the United States, United Kingdom and New Zealand from the 1970s to the 1980s. Originally used to describe independent record labels, the term became associated with the mu ...

band

, fronted by

, released their fourth studio album ''

Pedestrian Verse ''Pedestrian Verse'' is the fourth studio album by the Scottish indie rock band Frightened Rabbit, released on 4 February 2013 on Atlantic Records. Produced by Leo Abrahams and the band itself, it is the only studio album to feature guitarist an ...

'' on 4 February 2013, via

. To promote the album, the band embarked on an extensive 18-month tour, during which members of Frightened Rabbit suffered from

burnout Burnout or burn-out may refer to: Entertainment * ''Burnout'' (film), a 2017 Moroccan film * ''Burn Out'' (film), a 2017 French film * Burnout (ride), a Funfields amusement ride in Australia * ''Burnout'' (series), a racing game series created by ...

. Frightened Rabbit drummer

Grant Hutchison Grant Hutchison (born 13 June 1984) is a Scottish drummer and percussionist. He is best known as the drummer of the indie rock band Frightened Rabbit, with whom he recorded five studio albums. In 2022, Hutchison joined The Twilight Sad after a f ...

told Jason Keil of the '' Phoenix New Times'' that the band "just got run absolutely ragged" by the ''Pedestrian Verse'' touring cycle, and that they "all lost each other and ourselves a little bit" in the process.

Reception

''Owl John'' was met with mostly positive reviews from music critics. At

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, ''Owl John'' has an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...

score of 76 based on 13 reviews. The

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

AnyDecentMusic? AnyDecentMusic? is a website that collates album reviews from magazines, websites, and newspapers. Primarily focused on popular music – covering rock, pop, electronic, dance, folk, country, roots, hip-hop, R&B, and rap – albums are adjudg ...

gave the album 7.2 out of 10, based on their assessment of the critical consensus.

In other media

*'' The Royals'' featured "Los Angeles, Be Kind" and "Songs About Roses" in its first season (2015). *"Cold Creeps" appeared on the '' Shameless'' season 6 episode "Going Once, Going Twice" (January 2016).

Track listing

All lyrics by Scott Hutchison and all music by Andy Monaghan, Scott Hutchison and Simon Liddell.

Charts

References

{{Authority control 2014 albums Atlantic Records albums