Made Up Stories: Casiotone For The Painfully Alone

Casiotone For The Painfully Alone is a great storyteller.  His lo-fi songs fuse a mixture of detailed narratives and compelling character sketches. Sometimes – as on a few of the songs on his last record – a guest vocalist delivers his stories. Otherwise they are delivered with a frank intensity in his own sombre, emotive baritone. That Owen is a storyteller as much as a songwriter is a thorny area, for many listeners so often assume that as a songwriter he is depicting his own experiences, that the narrator is the writer.

“I’ve played shows where people have been like ‘I really love that song ‘Jeanne, If You’re Ever In Portland’ and you’re like ‘thanks’ and then they’re like ‘do you still talk to her?’ and it’s like ‘wait…who?’ It’s great, I mean I feel I’m doing the right thing if the songs sound convincing and real but I don’t intend on this to be my life, I intend on them to be records, I feel like I’m fooling people really unintentionally but it’s weird because I feel like I write about some really shitty people sometimes and I really enjoy writing about these characters, these undependable narrators where you know they’re not really telling you the full story but that’s your only source of information. So, I don’t know, it makes me feel really shitty that people think ‘wow, these songs are true’ because I don’t want…well, I sympathise with but I wouldn’t necessarily stand up for all the things people do in the songs.”

It seems linked with certain notions of ‘authenticity’ that are particularly valued in certain genres of music – that as a songwriter you write about yourself, you live your art, your music is ‘honest’. “Yeah, you know I have so many friends who have really different goals and intentions in how they write songs. I have friends where every song has to be true and that’s so boring. I don’t want everyone to know everything about myself, that’s for me. So, of course things that happen to me or my friends inspire the song but I don’t feel any obligation to tell the truth, I want them to be compelling songs that are entertaining and relatable.”

The inspiration for his down on their luck characters and austere narratives comes from plentiful sources – great writers like Tennessee Williams and country musicians including Willie Nelson are noted. His interest in storytelling comes from these, a favoured author Raymond Carver and hip hop – the latter an undeniable influence in his formative years. “I grew up listening to hip hop on the FM station, ‘Mind Playing Tricks On Me’, that Geto Boys song was the first song I recognised as my favourite song and I feel like that song is still something I think a lot about when I’m writing songs.”

His love of short stories more than anything is the greatest influence on his music: “I’m really just interested in the idea of having a very specific narrative in this really compact package, very economical language. The songs usually start with much more information but slowing willing away to as little as I can get away with for the story. I like not finishing stories and there sort of being an open endedness.”