New Music: Pet Owner – Friend

Friend typifies the recording and listener experience on Second Nature, the sophomore album from Swiss musician Pet Owner.

Pet Owner – aka Lea Mathis – wrote, recorded, and produced much of the album herself, which may be why it has such an unusual but very cohesive palette.

There is a pastoral psychedelic aspect, with more than a hint of the baroque, to Friend and Second Nature that can be quite disarming. The lyrics can seem like a stream of consciousness, tripping along the cosmic expanse of the arrangement. Mathis has a voice that has the abstractness of Trish Keenen and the folky outsider feel of Kate Bush, adding a friendly yet unfamiliar quality.

That goes to illuminate the album’s impact: the sound of a unique voice with her own vision and the skills to translate that into a recorded form, lifting the curtain on her inner being and walking along with us on our own journey, each finding our own paths on the way.

Second Nature was released on the 27th of February via Red Brick Records and is available to download on Bandcamp. For streaming options for the album, click here, and be sure to follow Pet Owner on Instagram.