Owen FitzGerald - "Don't Give Me a Pet"


Durham's outsider poet/country singer Owen FitzGerald is back with a new single. "Don't Give Me a Pet" starts off as a relatively straightforward modern country song, despite the noise loop at the beginning. It's a little bit off from mainstream, but that's hardly a bad thing. And then the bizarro rock burst kicks in that just leads the song into strange territory. It ushers in an indie rock fuzz that never quite leaves the song even as it tries to head back into a more traditional sound. Instead, the song wildly veers around with changing tempos and styles with little to no warning. In other words, it's exactly what we love around here.

In a press release, Owen FitzGerald says of the new song:

"My family attended the 10am Mass at St. Raphael's every Sunday while I was a child. 'Our' seats were on the left, and towards the front, if you were looking at the altar. I always held the aisle. After taking communion, a Catholic is supposed to kneel in prayerful contemplation until everyone has had their turn. Each week, dozens of congregants filed past me to and from the Eucharist. I kneeled and clasped my hands. I bowed my head low so no one would notice my open eyes. I stared at their shoes and pretended to pray. At a rate of about one second per pair, I logged style, brand, color, material, and condition and rendered judgement. My entire brain focused on sorting the shoes into 'cool' and 'not cool' while I tried to keep my posture devout. Honest to God, I've never told anyone about this game of mine until now.

"Tiny details can sweep me off my feet and take me to other planets, if I let them. As I got older, my tendency to be mentally elsewhere strained my relationships. I didn't like disappointing people that cared about me, but the thought of not being swept away felt claustrophobic and dismal. I wrote 'Don't Give Me A Pet' in 2013 when I felt unbalanced, chaotic, and liable to end up on another planet in the blink of an eye.”

You can listen to "Don't Give Me a Pet" below. A deep clean you can count on! is due out February 4 on Sleepy Cat Records. For more on Owen FitzGerald, check out the artist on Bandcamp.

On Repeat...

Liam Kazar - "Shoes Too Tight"

Dutch ReBelle - "GOONIEZ"

The Freqs - "Witch"