Ovven drops debut album ‘Gnawing At The Chord’
The Nashville musician delivers his first full-length.
★★★★☆
Photo: Ovven
“High glow of the heat sink gleaming. Bismuth empire alloy gonna blow.”
And just like that. It blows. The Thermal Fuse has been lit, and Gnawing At The Cord has kicked into gear. Ovven has arrived. I can’t help but get uncontrollably amped whenever I hear Thermal Fuse kicking off this album. It is a fuzz-guitar, alt-country tour-de-force and it shows us right off the bat that Nashville’s Owen Burton, who goes by the stage name Ovven, is not messing around.
At its best, Gnawing At The Cord plays out as if Elliott Smith was somehow fronting a version of Drive By Truckers that have been locked in a room with an endless supply of Guided By Voices records. This album is bursting with fuzzy guitars, sprawling lyrics and infectious melodies. It’s hard not to have fun listening to these songs. They are performed with an urgency that is as invigorating as it is exciting. At the same time, though, it refuses to take itself too seriously.
One of the highlights, Embarrassing, plays out like a real-life I Think You Should Leave sketch as it declares that “there is nothing more embarrassing than to be alive.” The song recounts a doomed encounter with a girl at a party that is so awkwardly specific, it’s hard not to visualise Tim Robinson himself lurking in the background somewhere.
The album is produced, impeccably as ever, by Alex Farrar. Farrar has overseen a multitude of the big-hitting indie alt-country records of the past few years, such as records by Wednesday, Fust and, most notably, MJ Lenderman. As ever with Farrar, the results simply sound great. It is made to be played loud. Another highlight, Dishes, is as restless as it is direct as Ovven pleads that he wishes “there was more dishes to do so there was something for my hands.” It’s hard not to get caught up in that restlessness as he ramps up the intensity for its opening couple of minutes before it simply collapses into a burned-out sprawling epic.
Yet, there is an elephant in the room here. A rather big elephant, too, in fact. It sounds exactly like MJ Lenderman. Not all of it, but certainly some of it. The song Abbreviated, whilst great, follows the exact same chord pattern and melody as Lenderman’s recent favourite, Rudolph. The vocal delivery on Embarrassing sometimes has me doing a double-take. It feels like I am listening to Lenderman’s trademark conversational drawl rather than the raspy melodic voice that Ovven elsewhere inhabits to light up Thermal Fuse.
None of this really detracts from my enjoyment of the album. It does, however, raise some interesting questions. How much influence is too much influence? Can you really sound too much like your heroes? Music can’t exist in a vacuum. It’s not supposed to. It’s pretty much impossible to exist in the indie alt-country scene and not be heavily influenced by Lenderman in 2026. Really, we wouldn’t even have the likes of Lenderman and Wednesday without Jason Molina or Drive By Truckers anyway. Isn’t this just the cycle of music? To take your influences and turn them into something new?
Ultimately, what Ovven really has going for him is that he is writing consistently great and exciting songs. On Gnawing At The Cord, he has put together a collection of songs that are driving, forceful and memorable. The songs twist and turn as the guitars explode, and the melodies burrow their way into your head. Simply put, it rocks. For me, that’s all that matters.
