Following Girls’ dissolution, Christopher Owens and his knapsack of riffs and heartache appear simultaneously reborn and unchanged. Lamenting mushiness and beatific beauty persist, yet they’re packaged as a more cohesive whole.
‘Lysandre’ is a concept album named after an exgirlfriend and inspired by Girls’ first tour. The demure, besuited Owens that brought its bruised tales to life on tour late last year matched its content perfectly.

‘Lysandre’ is artistic, smart, romantic and self-aware, and skips nimbly along a tightrope between splendour and self-indulgence. ‘Lysandre’s Theme’, opener and repeated motif, is full of flutes and pomp. Brass (‘New York City’) ‘Album’-era Girls guitars (‘Here We Go’) and orchestral flourishes plunge the listener directly into Owens’ emotional nerve centre.

But it’s his masterful way with romance, vulnerability and insecurity that shines most. The line “Tongue in my ear, hair in my mouth, I want you to figure me out,” in ‘Here We Go’’s portrait of new love tingles and shivers, before he admits “If your heart is broken, you’ll find fellowship with me.”

That Christopher Owens’ songs are so simultaneously vivid, immersive and indulgent is one thing, that he has crafted the character to execute them so expertly is quite another.