Casiotone for the Painfully Alone's
Town Topic EP, a 22-minute CD, combines the contents of two previously released vinyl EPs, Town Topic 7" and STSNC Instrumentals 7", plus one previously unreleased track, "Lesley Gore on the TAMI Show." The disc also constitutes the soundtrack music for director Laurel Nakadate's film Stay the Same Never Change. There are only two vocal tracks, the opener, "Ice Cream Truck," and the closer, a version of "Green Cotton Sweater." Among the 15 brief selections (six of which run under a minute each) are tunes drawn from the group's albums, such as "Twinkle Echo [Reverse]," which seems to be what it says it is, the title track from
Casiotone for the Painfully Alone's third album run backwards, and "Nashville Parthenon," an instrumental version of a song from the fourth album,
Etiquette. This may be
Owen Ashworth's one-man band in its purest form, a series of simple keyboard melodies creating an engaging yet cool impression.