The Owl was recorded over one midsummer week by Daniel Webster. Whiskey and a relaxed atmosphere recording at home in Harrogate are the reasons Karl gives for the result. The Owl yields 11 varied songs, both thematically and stylistically, featuring Karl's dexterous, versatile and innovative fingerstyle guitar and fine, spectral-timbred voice. Laid down just weeks before Karl left the North of England to move permanently to Krakow in Poland, the album contains songs of parting, stars, regret as represented by a dying horse, a dead mountain, new life, staying young in fields of rye, blues doom, and the title track, The Owl, the vulnerability inherent in surrendering oneself romantically.