Released to coincide with his birthday, and organised by Dan Wriggins (of Friendship) in collaboration with Dear Life Records, You Were Alone: An Owen Ashworth Almanac is a covers compilation featuring versions of Owen’s songs from family, friends, labelmates and fans. A celebration which recognises a birthday but also so much more than that. A body of work and the burgeoning legacy it has and continues to establish, not to mention the blossoming community fostered through Owen’s label Orindal Records.

And community feels like the right word for the compilation. Both in terms of the gathered artists and the characters they bring to life. Because hearing the songs in different voices really brings home the diversity of personalities present across Owen’s work. Pedro the Lion adds a weariness to ‘My Sister’s Birthday’ with his distinctively gruff fondness. Claire Cronin is the perfect person to fully excavate the spookiness of ‘Pamela’. MJ Lenderman and Karly Hartzman raise a glass to poor old Christmas Steve. Sinai Vessel captures ‘Kitty Winn’ in all its sad affection.

Some, like Lisa/Liza‘s ‘Rabbits’ or Karima Walker‘s ‘Same Dream’, take the original versions back to the traditional folk roots, while the likes of Ylayali, Moon Racer and Bedbug lean into the electronic, harking back to earlier CFTPA days. What’s impressive is how the distinctive “Ashworthian” voice remains across the spectrum. Even the tracks with no literal voice, be it Robert Stillman‘s take on ‘Christmas in Nightmare City’ or Gordon Ashworth‘s extended guitar version of ‘Nephew in the Wild’, lose none of their ability to evoke the tales we’ve grown to hold so dear. Because while Dan might have intended to organise a birthday party, it turned out more like a reunion. A gathering of Owen’s characters, our friends. Still here, still living, still with so many stories to tell.

Cover painting by Martha Miller

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Tracklisting:

Nectar – Slouch
Moon Racer – New Crush
Haley Heynderickx – The Bug Collector
M. Grig – Millpond Way
Lisa/Liza – Vanity Plate
Tancred – Reviews
Cloud – Disenchanted
Wellness – Fake Flowers
Kraków Loves Adana – Heather
Spartan Jet-Plex – Alright
Clara Marie – Bike or Boat
Nate Terepka – Tempelhof
Never Betters – Pictures
The By Gods – Wait Up
Talk, Tired Thanatoid – I Hit a Car
FRANKIIE – Glory Me
Queen of Jeans – U R My Guy
Grievances – Bliss
Painted Forest – Witness
Pema – Depend
VedeTT – It Seems To Be Natural
Boys – End of Time
Sun June – Young
Buck Meek – Cannonball
Young Jesus – Storm

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The latest Moon Racer release, Is It Really a Secret? uses this commitment to catalogue the present and explore the past. The album essentially acts as a diary, charting the ten month arc of a relationship from its hectic beginnings right through to the bitter end, the mood changing from excitement and confidence to disorientation and doubt, and then finally something approaching calm as the experience is filed away as a bittersweet memory to be viewed under rose-tinted light.

First track ‘Starry Up’ is the perfect introduction, Autumn’s dreamy vocals gliding across the fuzzy instrumentation, offset by synths as round and sweet and colourful as freshly unwrapped pieces of candy. This is the song about being besotted with someone, the dizzy delirium of new love not free of doubts and disappointments, but capable of surpassing them.

“I don’t care where you are
where you go
I’m so in love!”

It’s probably clear by now that nostalgia is a big part of the Moon Racer aesthetic. And this is true both in the titles of the songs, many of which draw on pop culture, and in something altogether harder to put a finger on, some intangible feeling embedded deep within the songs. For example, ‘Princess Jasmine in the Hourglass’ uses an image from a Disney movie to capture perfectly the breathless sense of time running out, of trying to keep your head above the proverbial sand that’s rushing in around you. ‘Song of the Mogwai’ bubbles and pulses, the yearning vocals front and centre, creating something that’s quietly transcendental (“It’s been a long time, I didn’t forget a thing”, Autumn sings, “I realize as time went by, I only remembered it more”), while the sub 2-minute ‘Friendly Ghost’ plays like a faithful homage to CFTPA, somehow managing to be reassuringly lo-fi, infectiously poppy and undeniably affecting all at once.

A touching cover of Magnetic Fields’ ‘Meaningless’ moves the record firmly into the despondent phase of the relationship. “You mean it’s all been meaningless?” Autumn asks, “Every whisper and caress?” The answer, unfortunately, is affirmative. “Yes, yes, yes, it was totally meaningless.” Just like with the original, the nihilistic take is contorted into it’s own curious meaning, as though the fact a human can appreciate a lack of meaning has some value of its own, and the sentimental Moon Racer sound only adds to this feeling.

That said, ‘Last Kiss’ follows with perhaps the least sentimental moment of the record, though again the downbeat lyrics belie the earnest warmth of the instrumentation. Final song ‘New Crush’ is more forthcoming, the heartsick and gooey vibe taking as much from dream pop as DIY bedroom recordings. “This song is about what a relief it is to finally like someone new, for the first time in a long time,” Autumn tells The Fader, “And then, realizing what a weirdo it’s turned you into.”

“When we’re out I am secretly
pretending I don’t see you see me,
but inside
Inside, where they’re swaying,
sigh, waiting.”

Is It Really a Secret? is an album with surprising depth. What on the surface appear nice little bedroom pop songs are actually documents of very real emotions. Because, as the quote from Autumn suggests, the sentimentality and earnestness on show here is not some brazen declaration, rather the colouring of an interior world that manifests as neurotic awkwardness. However whirlwind and volatile, the love is not one acted out with a Hollywood-style directness, instead the thoughts and feeling are repressed, played over internally so as to maintain face. This lack of communication is intrinsic to the nostalgia of the Moon Racer aesthetic, because it allows an imagination of what might have been—an iteration where interaction was easier, braver, more open, and the relationship everlasting.

You can get Is It Really a Secret? via the Orindal Records website or Bandcamp page.

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