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  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $8 USD  or more

     

  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    160 gram black vinyl LP with full color labels packaged in an extra heavyweight, full color jacket with complete lyrics, updated liner notes & original album artwork by Heidi Anderson. Package includes 4x6 postcard. 11 tracks, 32 minutes.

    Vinyl reissue pressed by Smashed Plastic in Chicago, IL. Lacquers cut from JJ Golden's original 2009 master by Matt Barnhart at Chicago Mastering Service.

    2020 reissue pressing: 250 copies on black vinyl, 500 copies on "Jetta White" natural opaque vinyl

    Includes unlimited streaming of Vs. Children via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 5 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      $18 USD or more 

     

  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    160 gram natural opaque vinyl LP with full color labels packaged in an extra heavyweight, full color jacket with complete lyrics, updated liner notes & original album artwork by Heidi Anderson. Package includes 4x6 postcard. 11 tracks, 32 minutes.

    Vinyl reissue pressed by Smashed Plastic in Chicago, IL. Lacquers cut from JJ Golden's original 2009 master by Matt Barnhart at Chicago Mastering Service.

    2020 reissue pressing: 250 copies on black vinyl, 500 copies on "Jetta White" natural opaque vinyl

    Includes unlimited streaming of Vs. Children via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 5 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      $20 USD or more 

     

1.
2.
Steelman frame in a creek bed took the money & you fled counted months til they found you they had your bike they were bound to 26 from here to home 26 no gun just notes 26 without a shot that‘s more than Bonnie & Clyde got you know they called you the Choir Boy before they had any hints that you only ever pressed your palms so you wouldn’t leave prints don’t they say you can’t go home Thanksgiving you should have known read your rights & cuffed face down in front of Ace Hardware in your hometown order called & they read your name on your feet as judgment came all those times they thought you were praying Tom you should’ve been praying you know they called you the Choir Boy the way you cleared those safes but you only ever bowed your head to keep your face off the tapes & Tom I heard you were smiling when the feds rushed in was it a kind of relief to pay for your sin
3.
we’re skeletons of cigarettes & empty cans & bottles & we tear out of the parking lot the engine at full throttle & we planned a route with all right turns so lights won’t get us caught we got a mess of cash in duffel bags & every penny’s hot well hallelujah well hallelujah oh & we’re laughing through the fear that we’ll never make the clear oh & you’ve never looked so dear it‘s the end of our career we’ll ditch the car in Wisconsin & hide out in the trees & I know a dude in Madison who owes some favors to me with the money in the back seat baby we could buy a house & raise a little family on Schlitz & Mickey Mouse well hallelujah well hallelujah oh & we’re laughing through the fear that we’ll never make the clear oh & you’ve never looked so dear it’s the end of our career
4.
I got some news on you from a friend you’re in Charlotte again teaching Spanish at high school he said you’re going by Joy you cut your hair like a boy & you don’t talk to your old friends I found a picture from before the fight we’re in natural light & you’re sitting on my lap like everything’s alright I’ve walked around with you on my mind the names we used at the time you know I’ve changed myself since then I’ve thought on things that we said what if we’d had the kid I guess he’d be 15 I found a picture from before the fight we’re in natural light & you’re sitting on my lap like everything’s alright
5.
here comes the frost that freezes every year shutter windows hang the Advent calendar what are you doing on your own with frozen ears I know we’re changing like the trees in Montpelier you took a job that put you on the road for days & weeks in motels’ sleepy TV glow with static filtering through pay phones in the snow it drowns your home by Christmases & love-you-sos & all our promises come so easy they fill distances til our next meeting but you’re always off the phone long before I’d prefer to be & I know that we should get some money saved I’ve felt the kicking growing in me every day oh we’ll live fat & happy when you get home you will say but I’d eat beans if you’d just stay & all our promises are so fleeting when all I really want is you close to me but you were already out the door by the time that occurred to me
6.
Man O' War 03:08
waded out into the tide stung by jellyfish & died left a wife & child behind ages 36 & 9 Christmas morning pictures fading tinsel glare Kim how long you gonna stare never sleep without a light hate aquariums alright older boyfriends all your life & usually they have a wife blame yourself blame your mother blame the sea blame a lover blame psychiatry to never know what kind of man your father’d be how you’d wished he’d kept a diary
7.
you took the baby to your mother’s end of June & kissed her for the last time on the bed in your old room then up to Northfield in the Fairmont just you two you always drove the getaway so you wouldn’t have to shoot & after a couple jobs like clockwork where not one of you had slipped you were on your way back to Wisconsin hit a deer & flipped came to on the pavement bleeding hard from the crash calling to no one he was as gone as the cash but there was the Ford flipped under an overpass the baby seat strapped in the back the windshield smashed & red streaked as an exploded dye pack & so you crawled in & you closed the door & laid on what was now the floor & swore that you would figure out the rest when it was morning
8.
Killers 02:39
oh my god what if we had an accident oh my god til you’re dead that’s how long you’re a parent til you’re dead you know I meant what I said I think you’ll be a good mother but honey look at us now we barely support each other take the pill I know it makes you crazy take the pill call in sick I’ll get some movies call in sick I know your mom was your age when she had your brother but honey look our lives how could we support another we could be killers just for one night
9.
how harsh the herald angels sing I‘ve been puking my guts all morning oh to bear the hex of unfairer sex it’s difficult & it’s boring I guess I just quit drinking I guess I just quit smoking guess I’ll need some names Alan William or James doctor tell me you’re joking I take the bus to the free clinic on Clemens with my headphones on & no music please don’t sit next to me Glad Lee the Cross-Eyed Bear walks into a bar she says you don‘t know how lucky you men are the tenants who live below me they pretend they don’t know me coz they don’t see a ring now they know everything they whisper & don’t hello me but talk your shit man I don’t care it’s _____ for a boy for a girl it’s Claire
10.
you were alone I saw you from that second story window no sign of Jerome he burned your would’ves right down to the cinders so why’d you go the party‘s full of friends that you lost in the break up did you think he’d show & be impressed by a new dress & your sister‘s make-up you were alone canvassing to save your reputation sobbing to Simone about how he up & left no explanation & how you drove out to his place to pound the door & wake the neighbors til they yelled he ain’t home now go & get some sleep do us a favor you were alone hiding from the rain in the gazebo shivered to the bone & hoping for a taxi to retrieve you well if you need a ride home I‘m on my way up to Orinda & you can wear my coat
11.
White Jetta 03:17
been this way for almost all my life wasn’t born here Mom & me moved here when I was 5 these Kansas City boys are dull as butter knives had this little car since I was 17 the tape is busted got a boom box in the back seat blasting Misfits all up & down these streets to stay the same to never change to stay the same to never change the college kids in KC all leave in the fall don’t have time for letters or long distance calls if friend you leave then friend you’re dead to me Mom‘s been sick now for a long time she says she hopes I’ll want a family after she’s died she says the less you feel like a child the more you‘ll want a child to stay the same to never change to stay the same to never change to stay the same to never change to stay the same to never change

about

Owen Ashworth wrote Vs. Children with the intention that it would be the final album from Casiotone for the Painfully Alone. Listening with the benefit of hindsight, it’s difficult not to hear the Chicago, IL singer/songwriter beginning to outgrow the moniker. First released by German label Tomlab in 2009, the record completed an evolution beyond the strictly electronic style of the early CFTPA releases, using piano, organ, Mellotron, and acoustic percussion to achieve a newfound richness. Coupled with its increasingly mature lyricism, Vs. Children represented something of an inflection point, a turn away from the often harsh keyboard arrangements of past records towards a more organic form. A sound that Ashworth would develop further as Casiotone metamorphosized into his new project, Advance Base.

The CFTPA discography inspired a generation of songwriters, and cult-hit Etiquette is now established as a prominent jewel in the crown of 00s bedroom pop. But Vs. Children has its own legacy. Artists continue to demonstrate its impact and influence, be it through Tomberlin’s cover of ‘Natural Light’ or the highest of praise from indie legend Stephen Merritt: “The lyrics are wonderful and I actually like his voice.” Nearly twelve years after the initial release, Ashworth has decided to reissue Vs. Children on his own Orindal Records in its original form—maintaining its legacy with a vinyl edition available outside of eBay or Discogs.

That the album occupies a liminal space in Ashworth’s oeuvre is fitting, because its characters find themselves in a similarly transitory place. The youthful melancholy of previous Casiotone releases matures into something different. Situations change, become more desperate, and the songs see the emergence of the subdued, wistful sadness that would come to define Advance Base. The protagonists of Vs. Children are no longer young but not ready for adulthood. Haunted by the past and terrified of the future, all the while yearning for the moment when their fears are realised and the tension released. The titular figure of “Tom Justice,” a track based on a real-life bank robber (and former co-worker of Ashworth’s), is smiling when the feds finally capture him. ‘Was it a kind of relief,” Ashworth wonders, ‘to pay for your sin?’

Alongside criminality, parenthood emerges as the second recurring motif, Ashworth’s uniquely compassionate writing pairing these unlikely thematic bedfellows into a nuanced, sympathetic whole. The duality between the felonious and the domestic—criminals who would be parents or parents who would be criminals—casts the double life as a kind of escape plot, a final reach for freedom from becoming who you are destined to be. An apprehended bank robber can never be anything else. And, to quote “Killers,” you’re a parent ‘til you’re dead. Vs. Children sees no option but to seize the giddy present. The past in the rear-view, the future an ambiguous, undecided space. On the run, you are neither good nor bad, son nor dad. Not special or normal, innocent or evil. No verdict has been reached, you can be anything. The two biggest judges in life are your children and the law, but they have to catch you first.

— Jon Doyle

credits

released February 5, 2021

Recorded by Owen Ashworth at Advance Base, Chicago, IL & Jason Quever at Pan American Recording Studio, San Francisco, CA
Julie Lispector recorded her own vocals for "Man O' War" at home in Bordeaux, France

Mastered by JJ Golden

Cover art by Heidi Anderson

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Casiotone for the Painfully Alone Chicago, Illinois

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