By Dan Mitchell; Photo by Sandy Kim

The past two years have certainly been eventful for Christopher Owens, the primary songwriter, guitarist and lead vocalist for the lauded San Franciscan duo called Girls. In this time, Owens has gone from writing songs in his bedroom late at night to releasing one of last year’s most acclaimed debut records, simply entitled Album, which officially saw the light of day on September 22nd, 2009. Nowadays, the internet hype machine proves capable of generating such tremendous buzz for bands well before records drop and, as was certainly the case with Girls, it becomes difficult to sort through the muddle and find the bands that are truly worth hearing. Girls is one of those groups that have proven their worth and they did it through constant touring, including two European tours with another coming in March, and the release of a uniquely fresh and invigorating twelve-song set put out by the True Panther label. ANTIGRAVITY got the opportunity to catch up with Owens just before he hits the road on yet another American tour that will bring him, among other places, to New Orleans for the first time.

Much has been made of Owens’ back-story—he grew up in the Children of God cult, traveling all across the world—but the real story lies in the music. Read the rest of this entry »

[This column originally appeared in the August 2009 edition of ANTIGRAVITY, available for download here.]

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

It’s the morning of February 7th, 2010. I’m cleaning my Mid-City apartment and making the final preparations for what will surely be the greatest party ever thrown. All the food is simple—chips, dips, vegetable trays and pre-made sandwiches, as to not give the hosts (me, my wife and our roommate) any chance of having to be away from the television for any reason. We have two kegs of a local amber and, for backup, a few bottles of a local rum—enough to make us forget, if it comes to that. We’re expecting a dozen or so of our friends and closest football compatriots—there will be no one asking questions like “how many yards is a 1st down” or “why don’t they go for two point conversions every time.” They’re the hardest of the hardcore, the people who we couldn’t imagine celebrating without.

If you’d have asked back in August what the Saints were going to do in the 2009/2010 season, I’d have said, “I think we’re making the playoffs, after that we’ll see.” There were still too many questions. We had an offense as good as any team’s, but one injury to Drew Brees could have taken that away. We had a defense that was unproven. It looked good on paper, sure, but it looked that way two straight years before and it ended up holding us back. Our great offense still lacked a running back who could consistently pick up the tough yards. Reggie Bush was proving to be the most versatile RB in the league but not someone you wanted to run the ball on 4th and 2. We knew Pierre Thomas had the heart but his tiny (by football standards) body surely couldn’t hold up for sixteen games while picking up those hard yards week to week. We had a head coach, Sean Payton, whose 2006 miracles felt like they happened decades ago, an offensive “genius” whose best-known play call from the past two years was an ill-fated wide receiver reverse that lost the game for his team. Gregg Williams, our new defensive coach, was the defensive version of Payton a few years ago—but a decent run as a coordinator in Washington was bookended by a 17-31 stint as a head coach in Buffalo and an average year in Jacksonville, where his Jaguars defense ranked 17th overall (and 21st in points allowed). It was enough to legitimately wonder whether he could sculpt the much-maligned Saints defense into anything closely resembling the team with which he earned his own “genius” label, the Tennessee Titans.

Besides all those question marks, there was one thing hanging over the head of every football fan in New Orleans. We were, after all, Saints fans. In return for forty-one years of fanaticism we’d gotten a .380 record and just two wins to go with six losses in the playoffs. We’d never won two playoff games in a row. The heartbreaks seemed to dwarf the highlights. Just in this decade, a Saints kicker missed an extra point after a last-second miracle TD that should’ve tied a game (that, had we won, would’ve eventually sent us to the playoffs). An opposing QB, whose coach eschewed a game-tying extra point at the end of regulation for a potential game-winning two-point conversion, fumbled the ball twice with Saints defenders all over him and still managed to get his hands on the ball a third time and run in for the winning points. We watched as our first homegrown quarterback since Bobby Hebert was run out of town by a stubborn coach who refused to use him, only to resurface with a division rival and, of all things, lead his team to the Super Bowl the very next season. Things happen to Saints fans, and we’ve been dealt enough blows to the psyche that even in the most optimistic of times a little voice inevitably calls out from the ether and says, “They’re still the Saints—just wait!”

So it wasn’t all that surprising when we nearly lost our 2009 season opener to the Detroit Lions, who were an all-time worst 0-16 the previous season. It was a combination of the Saints being overconfident (despite all the stories that claimed they wouldn’t be), the offense not quite gelling yet and Lions wideout Calvin Johnson, who went wild over the Saints’ new-look secondary. New Orleans pulled it out, though, and the scare actually created a sense of purpose that fueled the team.

A successful football season, especially one with a championship run, has as much to do with a confluence of events that seem unlikely, if not impossible, until they’re looked upon in hindsight. In the NFL, those are things like a perennial playoff team having a down year, another team’s star quarterback getting hurt, or somehow winning a game you had no business winning. But despite the lucky breaks, the circus catches and the sold out Superdome, the most important aspect of the Saints’ success in 2009 was due to an attitude adjustment. It was an adjustment a few years in the making. In 2005 the Saints had no other choice but to have a defeated attitude, but 2006 saw the arrival of Payton and Brees and a “we can score a ton of points and win a couple games we shouldn’t” thinking instilled in the Saints, and that they took a lot of teams by surprise helped hide the defense’s deficiencies, but that couldn’t be sustained in ’07 and ’08. But that created opportunity for 2009. The first thing to fall into place was that Payton finally fired Gary Gibbs and, to be fair, Payton’s realization he needed a great defensive mind at his side was a realization not all “offensive geniuses” come to in time to save their jobs.

With Gregg Williams in place, Sean Payton had a defensive coach who wasn’t passive in his schemes, one who brought the mindset that said, “We can use our defense to win a few games we wouldn’t have in the past.” The Saints defense was aggressive throughout the year, and the handful of times the aggressiveness burned them were far outweighed by the sheer number of turnovers they created. These two coaches became the perfect fit for each other because, frankly, the only thing each of them cared about was their own unit. As long as Payton’s offense scored points (and boy, did they) Williams was happy, and as long as Williams’s defense didn’t give up too many points, Payton was happy. The times were so good I could even stomach Eric Richey’s sportscasts on Fox 8.

And so it remained through the season, and, unfamiliarly, the playoffs. We won one playoff game. Then, unbelievably, a second. So I’m now putting the finishing touches on a clean apartment, tapping the kegs and arranging the sandwiches, because tonight we’re watching the Saints play in the Super Bowl.