Something about Casiotone for the Painfully Alone’s music reminds me of a Picasso sketch.  You know the one: it’s a simple ink and pen drawing that you feel like any child could do, but your own hand could never, despite repeated attempts, seem to replicate it? The endearing simplicity of Owen Ashworth’s monotone sing-speak, along with uncomplicated riffs on two Casiotone keyboards, draw one’s attention to his pretty, confessional-style lyrics that seem copied down from millions of cocktail napkins, bus tickets, and book margins.

Each song tells a sad story–of a one night stand, a car crash, or of general malaise in Kansas.  He seems to have a keen ability to parse experience down to its most skeletal form (“not how you imagined it…in a pantry with the pancake mix, you had your New Year’s kiss”), and then to make those bones dance to catchy electronic beats. The very personal, faux-autobiographical nature of the songs makes for an intimate listening experience, or as one iTunes reviewer put it so succinctly, “Owen, I love you! You were the soundtrack of my high school depression!”

Somehow, on Thursday night at the Echo, this experience did not translate well in concert. Ashworth is certainly a talented musician, but he seems to be a reluctant performer. He has an awfully shy presence; if I am not mistaken, he couldn’t look directly into the audience until he removed his glasses. He spent an enormous amount of time adjusting the tubes, wires, and knobs that generated his synthetic rhythms–a necessary evil at an electronic music concert, to be sure–but I started to wonder if it wasn’t an escape from connecting with the audience. And while the pop electronic beats were catchy enough to dance to, the spoken-word poetry aspect of the music meant that the audience stood in rapt attention…watching a man adjust knobs. Most of the concert-goers were hard-core fans, shouting out requests and cheering as they recognized the chords of their favorite songs, and they seemed wholly pleased with the CFTPA concert experience. But I’d prefer to experience Casiotone’s music in a more personal way, saving it for the places and times that I like it best, like a rainy Sunday morning, or a late-night introspective drive around the abandoned boulevards.

–Tara Everhart