Owen Ashworth doesn’t make complicated music. Musically, his songs are built around simple drum patterns and repeated chord progressions, realised either completely on a Casio keyboard (as with his last project, Casiotone for the Painfully Alone), or with a more organic piano and drum sound with his new project, Advance Base.
On face value, his lyrics are also simple and straightforward. He is however, to my mind, one of the greatest lyricists we have. His songs are vignettes to characters who aren’t often championed in music; characters like the ‘listless intellectual in her prime, scrabble high score 409’, the lonely cellist who practices ‘all day long until the notes are perfect, but your heart’s all wrong’, or the two high-school friends who return home for christmas, drive around and wonder ‘if we ran, who’d miss us’.
His lyrics are concerned with the understated people and moments in life; he wants to capture those half-remembered nights, the unnoticed glances of undisclosed love, the moments or people you haven’t thought about in years.
In music, as in literature, there are those who use a whole host of words and imagery to collect their feelings into a whole, and those who opt for a more simple and minimalist approach – trying to capture a feeling in the fewest words possible. Owen Ashworth belongs to the latter camp – he would rather explain unrequited love in the smile directed to someone after paying for a road toll (as on ‘When The Bridge Toll Was A Dollar), than opt for the hyperbole of say, ‘I’m glad I didn’t die before I met you’ a la Conor Oberst. As Mr Charlie Mingus once said, ‘making the complicated simple, that is true creativity’.
After putting Casiotone For The Painfully Alone to bed with a farewell tour last year, Owen Ashworth has recorded a new album under a different guise, Advance Base which was released a few months ago. The record has been released on Mark Kozelek’s label Caldo Verde which is a perfect fit, as Mark Kozelek has been treading the same lyrical paths that Owen Ashworth walks for over 20 years.
The album is aptly entited ‘A Shut In’s Prayer’ and it is another wonderful album, which I urge all to check out, along with the earlier Casiotone for the Painfully Alone albums. It is available on his bandcamp now, http://advancebase.bandcamp.com/
Here is a little lyrical example from A Shut In’s Prayer, called David Allen;
out past the curfew
& out past the fence
childs in the woods behind town
with flashlights & blankets
a tarp for a tent
a wild place to lay ourselves down
but us two were too scared
try as we might
to sleep under screech owls
& moths in the night
we ran back to your house
before it was light
& Tarzan’d the apple tree
up to the balcony
that was the summer
that we both turned 10
before you left our neighborhood
your sister your mom & you
changed names again
to escape your step-dad for good
I thought that I saw you
the other night
outside a sports bar in neon light
but I should know better
than trust my sight
how I’ve wondered Davy
if often you thought of me
