Chicago in Minneapolis: Casiotone For The Painfully Alone

Download: Casiotone For The Painfully Alone - "Young Shields"
Download: Casiotone for the Painfully Alone - "Graceland" (Paul Simon Cover)

Droll, lo-fi indie-tronica artist Casiotone For The Painfully Alone (aka Owen Ashworth) is playing a show tonight at the 7th Street Entry. Tickets are $8 for a 21+ show.

Though his last full-length LP Etiquette came out in 2006, CFTPA has been keeping plenty busy in the interim. In addition to numerous Daytrotter sessions, Ashworth has been releasing a plethora of singles and downloads through his website, as well as touring, touring, touring. If Ashworth keeps up his prodigious place, he may no longer be able to effectively convey the sense of mid-twenties ennui which saturates his bedroom-conceived brand of electronic pop-music that sound like little pocket symphonies for answering machines.

Etiquette broadened Ashworth's sonic palette by adding numerous other instruments and a warmer, more analog, sound; tracks like "New Year's Kiss" and "I Love Creedence" revel themselves to be wry observations about the overall banality of urban life. Which is a worldview that may not necessarily translate to a David Lee Roth-esque stage presence, but then, misery prefers company that doesn't really rock out with its cock out. But, based on the response to Ashworth's recorded output, it's not only the lonely who will commiserate with his grandly subdued songs.

CFTPA MySpace Page

(Jonathan Graef)