*** OWSLEY

(Giant)

A few years back, another pure pop hopeful, Brendan Benson struck almost exactly the same pose on his album cover that Owsley does here: suspended in exuberant mid leap, electric guitar slung like a totem on his shoulder -- a pose that captured the carefree kicks of pop. It's hard to say what Benson's up to these days, but Owsley's future may prove brighter, given his good fortune and even better connections: after a stint as Amy Grant's tour guitarist, he was hired by über-producer Mutt Lange to duet with Shania Twain on programs like the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and, uh, Live with Regis & Kathie Lee. But don't hold that against him. Left to his own devices, Owsley prefers to paint lush pop-art pictures with an ELO-by-way-of-Fountains-of-Wayne brush, adding a few day-glo dollops of XTC ("Oh No the Radio") for good measure. Despite the occasional misstep into the pedestrian lane ("Good Old Days" sounds like watered-down Semisonic, and lines like "One day you'll be able to forget the sadness/Get into the gladness" are syrupy enough to clog an artery), he makes a promising, if not picture-perfect, leap.

-- Jonathan Perry