Stream The New Christopher Owens Record, Lysandre (The Dude From Girls)

Listen to the whole dang thing over at The New York Times.

He is best known as the frontman and songwriter of Girls, a lo-fi band of shifting pop harmonies that arrived on the indie scene around 2007 and, with two albums and one EP, quickly became a critical darling. Songs that married a vulnerable earnestness — “Oh, I wish I had a boyfriend,” Mr. Owens sings in “Lust for Life,” over playful guitar strums; “I wish I had a father, maybe then I would’ve turned out right” — with a louche house-party vibe earned the act a devoted fan base. But in July, Mr. Owens announced on his Twitter account that he was leaving the group, which he formed with the producer and bassist J R White, to pursue a solo career. “I need to do this in order to progress,” he wrote.

His debut CD as Christopher Owens, “Lysandre,” a themed album charting the course of Girls’ first tour and a love affair with a Frenchwoman named Lysandre, is due on Tuesday from Fat Possum Records. It is at once a departure from his previous work — the first track, “Lysandre’s Theme,” is 40 seconds of Renaissance-sounding melody, complete with flutes and classical guitar, that is folded into every subsequent song — and of a piece with Girls. There’s romantic longing, veiled bad behavior and naked self-doubt, set to pleasingly throwback California pop-rock (with flute and saxophone). Composing the theme not long after he returned from the tour, Mr. Owens did all the instrumentation himself — whistling the flute parts in his demos — and in a feverish rush wrote nearly all the songs in one day, a year later.