Preview
CASIOTONE FOR THE PAINFULLY ALONE
Friday, January 28
Broken City
Hidden away in a battered antique trunk in my parents’ basement, there’s film footage shot by my grandfather of a five-year-old me learning how to ski. In each shot, I’d cascade down gracelessly, smacking head-on, time and time again, into the chrome bumper of my grandparents’ behemoth Pontiac Parisienne. Embarrassing? Yes. You think I would have learned to swerve, but every take follows the same path: down the hill all smiles, face-first into the bumper all tears.
Now, if music were film, then the heart-wrenching synth-pop portraits in miniature of Owen Ashcroft (released under the brilliantly apt moniker Casiotone for the Painfully Alone) would be those films – of mine, of yours, of everyone’s. If there’s a light at the end of the tunnel of Casiotone’s tales of heartbreak, it’s twofold: you can dance to just about all three album’s worth of them (albeit kind of a shy shuffle), but more importantly, we find out we’re not alone in our constant and continual face-smacks into the car bumpers of modern romance.
On the telephone from his new home in California (the morning after his car was broken into – it was probably grey and raining, too), Ashcroft wastes no time in countering his reputation.
"I get a lot of shit for being really depressed," he says. "I don’t think I am. I grew up with country music. I listened to the Carter Family and every song is so depressing and it didn’t even occur to me that every song is so brutal. I just thought that’s how music should be to me. I want music to be kind of difficult and upsetting and cathartic and that’s how I write. Writing happy songs sounds disingenuous to me."
Given Ashcroft’s own history in film, the comparison is truly more than fitting. A dropout from the San Francisco State film program, Ashcroft turned to music upon realizing that his first love remained frustratingly out of reach.
"Music is the synthesis of writing and film, yet film strays so far from your initial idea. I love film, but music is sufficient and cost-effective as a direct way to communicate these ideas." (Thankfully those pesky car thieves left Ashcroft’s Super-8 camera right where it lay on the back seat, snatching a few tools instead).
As a songwriter Ashcroft builds his Casiotone narratives from the lyrics up, remaining surprisingly cavalier about his own enviable talents as a musician, capable of lodging a hook inside your head for weeks.
"The music itself is necessary and incidental," he says. "It has to be something because no one’s going to listen to me just talk. The words are always the most important part for me and everything else is afterwards. It’s all approached like a film in that it all comes out of a two-line synopsis, followed by a melody and an idea."
Carrying a heavy, cracked baritone not far removed from a somewhat more nervous and reserved Tom Waits (where Waits is scary, Ashcroft is cuddly), Casiotone’s finest moments come off as the perfect synthesis between story and song, all backed by Ashcroft’s bizarre collection of battered battery-run Casio keyboards.
Of those who embrace Casiotone’s bruised tales, a surprisingly rabid fan base has grown to include the likes of DFA records’ James Murphy ("It’s really weird hanging out with him because he’s a super important New York person," says Ashcroft), Simon LeBon ("The most uncomfortable and bizarre huge rock experience – I so don’t belong here") and the Kronos Quartet’s David Harrington ("We went record shopping. He’s the coolest guy and I’m totally freaked out by the prospect of working together"). Given his future plans – the Casiotone album currently in production features more than 12 musicians, full string sections, pedal steel guitar, and even a trained guest group of flautists – it shouldn’t be too long before Ashcroft’s place alongside these most grown up of fans is secure. Still, Ashcroft remains characteristically cautious in admitting, "I’ve been having nightmares about it. I’ve been reading this Orson Welles biography and I’m just too young to have Orson Welles burnout."
It’s not like Casiotone’s brand of tuneful misery is for everyone and – snobbish as it may sound – if you ask me, that’s just another factor in making Ashcroft’s albums that much more gosh-darn-it-all special.
"It’s a special kind of person who really loves sad songs. Some people get it, some don’t. Some of us really like really distressing and really sad media. We probably all read the same books and watch the same films," Ashcroft says.
On all counts, he’s absolutely right. |
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