Caine Blog

There was a period - maybe in high school, or freshman year of college? - when I listened to a lot of Casiotone for the Painfully Alone.  Perhaps you know the act.  “They” are really one guy, Owen Ashworth, who sings depressing songs about youthful indulgence, deflated post-collegiate dreams, and lost love, set to the lo-fi beats and blips of several…Casiotone keyboards.  When I was younger his lyrics seemed sad but nevertheless possessed a certain romance, a bohemian gloom that was the necessary byproduct of freedom.  Freedom from school, from parents, from obligations, from that which must be done - of course one would feel lost in the shuffle from time to time, would feel alone, but that was the price of living in the city and running with a fast crowd.

Flash forward not very many years, and I find myself much more aligned with Ashworth’s protagonists: I’ve graduated college, I live in a big city, and I don’t know what I want to do yet with my life.  I run with a fast crowd.  I suppose it’s fitting that I’ve been listening to Casiotone again, this time as accompaniment to my daily bicycle commute.  All the same, the songs sound very different.  Gone is anything sentimental - where were those wistful sighs I thought I heard 3 years ago?  In their place is unflinching honesty, heavy-handed critique, and ultimately moral judgment.

“Young Shields” presents possibly the greatest display of Ashworth’s disgust.  Take a listen:

Young Shields - Casiotone For The Painfully Alone

The last two lines of the last verse are particularly compelling:

We’ve cursed the names of our hometowns/
We’re compassless and nowhere bound

One quickly realizes that being ‘compassless and nowhere bound’ is far less romantic than it seems; this has certainly been my experience.  The allure of adventure resembles a joke when faced with the nervousness of the present - how will I pay my bills? - but it also seems ridiculous when forced to look to the future.  To spend so long learning how to become something great, only to burn the books…how gratuitous and self-serving!  It serves no one to forget the direction from which they came.

Basically, I’ve said in windbag prose what someone on the website SongMeanings.com stated much more eloquently: “This song is quite clearly about hipsters.”