Hi, how's it going? I'm Justin. I live in Brooklyn and design at One of my favorite new artists from the past year is Casiotone for the Painfully Alone. While he’s not new to the world, he’s new to me. He’s all at once sad, hopeful, wistful, cynical, fragile, damaged, unaffected. If Bon Iver lived in Brooklyn instead of in a cabin in the middle of nowhere and had a penchant for low-fi production he’d sound something like Casiotone.
This is the first of three or four songs I’ll post this week. All of his songs are biographic in content. This might be my favorite and is definitely the one that I most emphasize with and am moved by. Maybe it’s the country music I grew up listening to with my grandparents but I love a story in a song with bonus points for unrequited or lost love.
This song is lyrically heartbreaking. It’s incredible how the first verse establishes these characters and creates immediate empathy. The hope of the protagonist is palpable and makes the chorus even more heartbreaking.
“Elle’s the only one besides my dad who’s ever said ‘I love you, Creedence’.” is the most emotionally loaded line of the song. Within it lies the implication of a broken man who’s grown up mother-less and desperate to hang onto the one woman in his life for whom he’s ever felt—and had reciprocated—love. Such a rich story full of loss and heartbreak in such a small package.
