Desert Hearts

Desert Hearts are not the kind of band you’d expect to find supporting Casiotone For The Painfully Alone. Where Casiotone’s Owen Ashworth opts for beautifully observed narratives and moments of lo-fi transcendence, Desert Hearts prefer to pummel our senses with mad, immortal sound – lacerating guitars, drums that sound like a series of explosions in a munitions factory and lithe, loping bass. They utilise the quiet/loud dynamic to devastating effect, moments of hushed contemplation segueing into shrieking, blood-stained riffery. Distress and hope, guilt and nostalgia, theirs is a bittersweet, always intoxicating brew.

They unleash a devastating set, mingling songs from debut album Let’s Get Worse with cuts from dark opus Hotsy Totsy Nagasaki. Unfortunately technical difficulties – the drummer hits so hard that the kit has to be fixed in-between songs – mean that proceedings must be cut short. Still, there’s time enough for a startling rendition of_ ‘Sea Punk’_, singer Charlie Mooney’s face etched with soul churning emotion, brutal rhythms and squealing guitar carrying his wild, wordless wail to the close.

If Desert Hearts put a gun to our temple and demand fealty through sonic force, then Casiotone For The Painfully Alone persuade by altogether more subtle, though no less persuasive means. Owen Ashworth shuffles to position behind his battery of keys and switches, a grizzly ol’ bear of a man, sharp of stubble and soft of heart. Casting out slivers of sparse, electronic oddness, he registers more insights into love, death, life and green sweaters than we have any right to expect from a single performance.

Excavating a mountain of memories, CFTPA bring us gorgeously evocative narratives,_ ‘Don’t They Have Payphones Where You Were Last Night’_ is melancholically acerbic,_ ‘Young Shields’_ a bittersweet, curdled melodrama, and ‘Nashville Parthenon’ _all nagging loss and brain muddled loveliness. There’s even a disarming cover of Springsteen’s ‘Streets Of Philadelphia’, the spirit of the Boss channelled through Casiotone, become truly haunting. Later, CFTPA associate Jenn Herbinson takes the stage and provides sweetly trilling vocals on a number of tracks including a feverish ‘Scattered Pearls’ and, audience demanded, ‘Casiotone For The Painfully Alone In A Green Cotton Sweater’_.

The vulnerability of the performance is what is so affecting, the intimacy of the biographical fragments, this big guy unburdening himself of his most secret, painful and profound experiences, transforming human emotions into songs that are surprising, inspiring and relentlessly entertaining. The audience may be as sparse as the instrumentation, but what matters isn’t the amount of people here, but the force of connection between those present and performer. For us, CFTPA are as unforgettable as they are untypical.