Scottish artist Dean Owens has always been in perpetual motion, but 2024 proved particularly fruitful with sold out tours in Europe and the States along with a sojourn to the rolling hills of Emilia Romagna to record his latest album. The home of his lion-taming great, great grandfather (!), Italy holds a special place in Dean’s psyche and that has made Spirit Ridge a very personal affair. Recorded with Italian producer Don Antonio at the helm, this album contains a dozen sun kissed songs that get to the very heart of Dean and they’ll touch your heart, too.

The first thing that hits you with Spirit Ridge is its lustrous production, like a gently humming Marshall amplifier or brand new engine oil it is thick, golden and emits a warm glow. It provides the perfect canvas for Dean to paint his sound and the palette he’s chosen enables him to create vivid soundscapes. Dean’s voice is equally ornate, it sounds as if it has been soaked in honey, and it adds an air of authority to opening track ‘Eden Is Here’. In opposition to the rest of the album it is a sparse song, but like the rest of the album it is very evocative and conjures images of red stone and yellow sand cooling beneath a bruised coloured sky. It’s a song that suggests a new beginning, the start of a road trip, and in the arc of the album it makes perfect sense. Whilst not a concept album per se, Spirit Ridge has the feeling of a journey, a tumbleweed taking on form as it progresses, and as such it is best consumed whole to fully appreciate its ebb and flow.

Dean’s lyricism is autobiographical and serves to draw the listener into his confidence and that makes this album a very personal affair. The characters who inhabit songs such as ‘Sinner Of Sinners’ become three-dimensional (and slightly dangerous). So when the words and music combine something very magical happens, the songs become cinematic and panoramic, wide open vistas which lose us in their vast expanse. Spirit Ridge is a record that’s absorbed elements of both Dean’s native Scotland along with producer Don Antonio’s Italy and both give this album a borderland aesthetic, a frontier of an album with territory just waiting to be mapped.

The warm sound with which Don Antonio has furnished this album is supplemented by a range of guest musicians, most notably a brass and string sections and that makes Spirit Ridge a multifaceted affair. With no two songs inhabiting the same sonic space we travel from the sparse opener to the infectious ska beat of ‘Wall Of Death’ and throughout all of these sonic shifts, Dean is the glue which holds the album together, walking beside the listener and guiding us through tales of dark and light. Dean’s twelveth album finds an artist who is still searching and Spirit Ridge is a sure step on an eternal quest.

• Spirit Ridge is released via Continental Song City and is available now.
• Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube Channel

Track List:

1. Eden Is Here
2. Spirito
3. My Beloved Hills
4. Light This World
5. The Buzzard And The Crow
6. Burn It All
7. Face The Storm (The Buffalo)
8. Sinner Of Sinners
9. Wall Of Death
10. A Divine Tragedy
11. Spirit Of Us
12. Tame The Lion *

* Not on vinyl version