Casiotone for the Painfully Alone
Twinkle Echo
[Tomlab; 2003]
Rating: 6.9
Though decisively not the most enterprising of recent Tomlab releases, Twinkle Echo, the third full-length from lonely songsmith Owen Ashworth (aka Casiotone for the Painfully Alone) reveals endless nuance and wit within a seemingly exhaustible medium: two-minute Casio keyboard-spun pop songs. It'd be all too easy to file his now static formula under "harmless gimmick," but what Ashworth lacks in breadth and depth he gains in sonic fluency and ease of digestion. And while he has essentially tapped this act for all it's worth (Twinkle Echo being his master's thesis in battery-powered home recording), I still can't quite bring myself to elevate him into a new stratospheric peer-bracket.
In application, his true classmates (and, in truth, professors) run the gamut from Stephin Merritt and John Darnielle, as evidenced through his piecemeal song structures and earnest delivery, down to sonic colleagues All-Time Quarterback and Atom & His Package. Xiu Xiu frontman Jamie Stewart, with whom Ashworth will soon embark upon a Japanese tour, guests on this album to aid with the mixing and once-augment Ashworth's Casio SK-1 and keyboard army with a few smears of guitar. He even plays shows with The Rapture, so all told, circumstance doesn't exactly paint a painfully lonely picture. However, most of his music does.
Although Casiotone's music is fundamentally digitally based-- comprised of stock percussion tracks, a few protracted waves of flimsy keyboard rhythms, and one-shot narrative verse-laden melodies-- it feels wholly organic. The sound is full of lo-fi hiss and obfuscation, as if maybe Ashworth left his equipment out in the rain overnight, or needs to change the AA's. Man and machine limp arm-over-shoulder through many of these fourteen threadbare snapshots, never playing chicken with the hard-and-fast limitations bearing down on them.
Each song is emotionally laid bare, giving the impression that the fourteen inclusions here were written for no more than an audience of maybe fourteen people, though Ashworth claims not to air out his personal (mis)fortunes in his songs. He continually references locales ("I wish we could've talked all night/ We had to be in Illinois by daylight" from "Jeane, If You're Ever in Portland") and time ("Six more weeks and it's back to school/ It's perfect weather/ The moon is full/ We'll ride all night under the streetlights") as if encoding moments from a personal timeline that flows through his keyboard. In the latter track, "Casiotone for the Painfully Alone in a Yellow T-Shirt", Ashworth fittingly delivers the line, "Don't borrow the car/ It's what we've got bicycles for," in an excellent metaphor for his pragmatic approach to storytelling. He takes the simplest route from A to B, and though the sketches do come off as personally affecting, they gain universal appeal through their artlessness.
"Toby, Take a Bow" employs nearly the exact same high-end percussion pattern as Death Cab for Cutie's "Photobooth", but instead of counter-punctually launching into a warm pop lick, he meets the beat below the water line and wades in the foamy, under-produced wake. Occasionally he turns up the tempo, as on "It Wasn't the Same Somehow" and "Students for the Scarves & Charms", but never abandons the stark, conversational delivery of his slower moments.
For such a literate and levelheaded lonely talent, Ashworth exploits the medium for all its worth without ever venturing into pretension, and this is precisely what ensures him success and makes this album such an effortless listen. Of course, I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to seem him take a swing at something bigger. After all, the twice-mentioned Ben Gibbard (ATQ's "Why I Cry") as well as Atom & His Package have already covered Stephin Merritt songs in recent albums, which tells me something: The well for this sort of thing has nearly run dry, and though CFTPA has managed to escape dehydration, Ashworth could conceivably better quench his thirst in deeper waters.
-William Morris, September 26, 2003
Review by Ned Raggett
Casiotone's third album finds the promise of Owen Ashworth's earlier work paying off ever more in spades. Despite a higher profile and a series of concert tours, he's not changing around the basic approach yet -- it's him, his trusty keyboards and machine beats, a guest appearance or two, and his own gift for sweet, murky, and involving songs. His gift for personal details -- an X marked on one's hand for a show, 'driving all night for no reason. . .until the tape's done' -- gets further reflection in many of the song titles, usually referencing some name in particular. "Toby, Take A Bow" is one of his best, portraying 'the greatest Smiths fan' ever with a series of sly references to song titles by said band that actually create a portrait instead of simply being a joke. Musically, meanwhile, Ashworth keeps on keeping on, wistful and warm synth lines mixed up with hollow clatters, and an overlay of enveloping murk that never drowns the songs entirely. It's a fine balance of the merry and the melancholic, as the clipped beats and low drones of "It Wasn't the Same Somehow" and the melancholia turned into an anthem approach of "Hey Eleanor" and "Blue Corolla" show. If one can argue that the Magnetic Fields already covered this ground to a large extent, then the counterargument is that Ashworth has just as distinct a voice -- lyrical and singing -- as Stephin Merritt (as it stands, Ashworth's a clearer and lighter singer in the first place). The most self-referential moment? "Casiotone for the Painfully Alone in a Yellow T-Shirt," a noticeably more clattering rhythm underpinning a calmly sung story -- backed beautifully by a guest turn on contrabass -- about using a summer night to the best one can, even if it's just nothing but 'riding all night under the street lights.'
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