Owl John (album)


Owl John is the only album by Owl John, the solo musical project by Frightened Rabbit vocalist and guitarist Scott Hutchison. It was released on 4 August 2014 on Atlantic Records.
The music for the album was written and recorded on the Isle of Mull, Scotland, in early 2014, with Hutchison working with Frightened Rabbit's Andy Monaghan and Simon Liddell. He then moved to Los Angeles, 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.
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 its song "Champion of the World".

Reception

On its release the album received critical acclaim. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has received a score of 76, based on 13 reviews which is categorised as "Generally Favourable Reviews".

In other media

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

Charts