Vs. Children

iTunes Review

Nipping at the heels of March 2009’s Advance Base Battery Life (a compilation of singles and rarities), Vs. Children is the fifth album from Owen Ashworth and his lo-fi studio of Casiotone wizardry. Though comprised of keyboards and electronic bleats that sometimes skip, rollick, twinkle and shimmer with romantic longing, Vs. Children won’t send you into the night gently, but may have you pulling the covers over your head instead. Ashworth has a voice that’s mostly flat and barren and scratchy, like a wintery midwestern landscape. Like Magnetic Fields’ Stephen Merritt or Smog’s Bill Callahan, Ashworth’s lonely voice and his stripped-down compositions conjure a vulnerable and naked neediness, and some of his simplest lines evoke a shudder. (Consider the novella inside this brief lyric: “’Til you’re dead, that’s how long you’re a parent. ‘Til you’re dead.”) Ashworth is a gifted and unique storyteller, and the ways in which his minimalist instrumentation — which somehow manages to conjure dread, hope and resignation in equal parts — can stretch a song into something unpredictable is a continual delight.