Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, the one-man, lo-fi project of Owen Ashworth, is best enjoyed with intimate knowledge of the following: bedsits, doomed semi-romances, pop culture obsession and of course, loneliness. Cardigans are encouraged, but not required. Fortunately, Portland is the kind of town that favors all of these things, so I bundled myself into my favorite red sweater jacket and headed out into the cold January night.
Casiotone was playing one of my favorite venues, Backspace, the rare exception to the stringent regulations of the Oregon Liquor Control Commission that allows drinkers and the underage to mingle. After a disconcerting fire alarm, first openers Tragos Amargos took the stage shortly thereafter and to be honest, it was pretty difficult to tell who was in the band and who was just close to the stage. Although their MySpace page shows the Portland group as the duo of Luz Elena Mendoza and Paul Cameron, there were at least three other individuals playing instruments (including accordion) or singing (one without a mic). With each song, Mendoza and Cameron's warm harmonies were joined by new voices, until the latter's classical guitar pickings and the former's Joan Baezesque vocals were afloat in a whole texture of sound. Apparently it was their first show and Mendoza read her lyrics off a sheet of paper at one point, but they at least presented themselves well. It's nice seeing a ukulele onstage every once in a while.
Much as I websurfed, I couldn't find any info about the next band, Key Losers. Aside from the probability of their lifting a Guided By Voices title for their name, I noted that they were a five piece whose singer introduced them by quickly shouting "Key Losers! Whoo!" and breaking out into song. They were dominated by deep, reverb-heavy guitars that sometimes drifted into the fuzz territory, but most stayed within the arc of vaguely alt-country. For sake of name recognition, if nothing else, they might want to introduce some songs...or band members... or anything.
There was a mercifully brief interval between Key Losers and Casiotone, most of which involved getting equipment off the stage. Ashworth's set up is not complex- a keyboard, a few synthesizers and a microphone, all set up close to the crowd. When he finally stepped behind the mic, unexpectedly clean-shaven and expectedly bespectacled, he warded off the applause and explained that tonight's performance was being recorded and that he'd always had a notion of beginning a live release with apathetic, polite applause. After coaching us into a golf course, limp-wristed round of languid enthusiasm, he leaped back up to the microphone and started the beats. Although he opened with "Optimist vs. The Silent Alarm (When The Saints Go Marching In)" from his newest full-length release Vs. Children, Ashworth was surprisingly interactive with the crowd and heavy on his back catalog. Throughout the performance, he called out to the audience for song requests, sometimes immediately playing them, sometimes explaining that the particular track would be played later. Only once did he point blank refuse to play a song, stating wryly that it had been "retired."
Instead, we got such delicate paeans to loneliness as "White on White," with its agonizing final lyric "I guess this is as close as it gets to goodbye" and "I Love Creedence," this time, altering the final age of the narrator to 36 instead of 26. Although he largely stuck to older favorites like "Bobby Malone Moves Home" and "Jeane, if You're Ever in Portland," a few new ones like the ponderously titled "Tom Justice, The Choir Boy Robber, Apprehended at Ace Hardware in Libertyville, IL," made it through (he introduced that one as a "true story"). Throughout, Ashworth appeared awkward onstage, clutching the mic to himself while singing, sometime almost clinging to it; I was reminded of seeing cult icon Daniel Johnston last year and finding the same qualities repellent. However, while Johnston seemed to me to be clinging not so much to the microphone as to a certain public legend, Ashworth simply seemed to need to have something in his hands.
Nearly each song began with Ashworth adjusting his equipment to new songs, a few cold beats washing over the crowd; even more than on record, the sounds themselves seemed isolated and harsh, distant from each other. For many musicians, that's probably be a negative thing, but for Casiotone, it's the perfect sound. Ashworth was surprisingly generous and demure. Even after he played his flatly soulful cover of "Streets of Philadelphia," one of the highlights of the performance, he merely stated "Good song. That's a Bruce Springsteen song," and moved on with the performance. In a world of preening frontmen, it's good to see someone willing to let his music speak for him.
by Nathan Kamal
[Photos: Marc Krause and Fiona Diffley]
