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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Swim Camp – Pretty Bird
Black Belt Eagle Scout – Indian Never Die
Pedro The Lion – Quietest Friend
Cat Clyde – Anymore
She Keeps Bees – Coyote
Cartwheel – Nothing
Tempertwig – Comfort Blanket
Downhaul – Wires / Enough
Witching Waves – Eye 2 Eye
LISA – Primitive Us
Yamachan – Rose Gold Blue
Spelling Reform – The Second Coming
Faith & Majesty – Summer Fling
Caroline Lazar – Georgia
Jeffrey Silverstein – Easy Rider
Ronnie Rogers – Leaning On
Nanami Ozone – Alone Too
Fresh – Willa
Perfume V – Perfume Homes Movies
Hand Habits – Can’t Calm Down
MUNYA – Benjamin
LUNCH – Forget Everything
Control Top – Chain Reaction
Prudence – Euphoria
Cult Film – Bored to Death
Walking Bicycles – Fat Cat
Lost Dog – DFT
Sharkmuffin – Serpentina
Bandy – Trying to Reach You
Gold Connections – Like a Shadow
AllegrA – Spoon or Fork
Parkway & Columbia – Wondering and Wandering
la loye – to live underwater
Kitchen – Claws
Spectator – Waves
Sailor Boyfriend – The Battle of Sugarhill
Ladada – My Van
The Exbats – 2027
Adir L.C. – Reacting
minihorse – Drink You Dry
Trevor Stott – Halfway in the Night
Tyler Burkhart – Waiting For You
Or Sobre Blau – Mártires

Like what you hear? Catch up with the rest of our Monthly Mixes!

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It is tempting to read the title as a reference to Bazan’s return to his old moniker, but the reference is more overtly geographical than mythological. Bazan and his family left Phoenix, Arizona when he was twelve, and the album focuses its lens back on that time. The songs are intensely personal, the irony that abandoning a solo career to pick back up as a band has led to music more introspective than ever not lost on Bazan himself. “I didn’t realize what calling my music Pedro the Lion again would mean to me,” he says, “but it’s re-connected me to parts of myself and my history (both sonic and personal) that I had lost touch with.”

After the organ-like synths of the opening instrumental, ‘Yellow Bike’ opens with a modest and ordinary scene. “On a desert Christmas morning, 1981,” he sings, “one month shy of six years old, in the valley of the sun.” Though the simplicity belies gravity of the song, the first movement of a deep dive into childhood—an anguished but unflinchingly honest reckoning with the past in attempt to reconcile the present.

The song fuses the freedom of his first childhood bike ride with the lingering pain of isolation, feelings that can be extrapolated through to today, projections or self-inflicted fantasies that can come to define a life. A single taut guitar line backs the opening verse, a systolic drumbeat heralding the arrival of the full band, like a new dawn after years as a solo artist.

Placed in the context of a strict Christian upbringing, ‘Powerful Taboo’ plays as an child’s confused attempts to become themselves amidst a maze of barriers, dogmatic rules undermined by forces intrinsic and personal. The experience becomes one of guilt and shame, the middle ground where truths both religious and intimate are betrayed simultaneously in doomed effort to remain faithful to both. Such a predicament haunts ‘Circle K’ too, a tale of a childhood Bazan trying to collect enough pocket money for a Santa Cruz skateboard. The song is ostensibly unremarkable, but the writing and vocal delivery make the image of his child self spending his savings on candy and soda pops suddenly momentous, a harbinger of a thousand adult decisions.

Fittingly then, the salvation imagined on ‘Model Homes’ comes not via self-actualization or some higher power, but rather the offer of better living, a time where scrimping and saving in a lonely town is ended by the lottery of the American Dream. The isolation made clear on ‘Yellow Bike’ is ever-present, and the biggest draw of such a prize is the magnificent company that surely awaits its winners—suburbs as they appear in made-for-TV movies, full of friendly kids and fun adventures.

However the reality is different, and making friends requires compromise and self-deception. The title character of ‘Quietest Friend’ seems to be a part of Bazan himself, a part he kept hidden like Bukowski’s bluebird in an effort to connect with “fickle friends” since he was a child. “I didn’t see it coming but now it’s pretty clear,” he sings, “I traded my own wisdom for a jury of my peers. I ignored you for 30 years.” The accompanying video, directed and shot on 16mm film by Jason Lester, sees Bazan come face to face with this persona, quite literally.

‘Black Canyon’ uncoils slowly into a hard, flat rhythm, as sparse and unforgiving as the desert plains themselves. Based on family stories recalled from his childhood, the song details the aftermath of a road accident from the perspective of the men and women called to the scene. “My uncle Ray was a paramedic,” Bazan’s sings, “one of the first boots on the ground, he saw the man beneath the truck in several pieces, obviously gone.” The song echoes ‘Car Crash While Hitchhiking’ from Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son, displaying the same stunned realism in the face of sudden violence, beauty and the grotesque meeting in strange communion.

Such a juxtaposition lies at the heart of Phoenix. Childhood is remembered with intense dread and desperate fondness, a time to be blamed, pinpointed as the beginning of every adult hang-up and dead-end yet still somehow precious, even glorious. “My Phoenix still shines,” Bazan sings on ‘My Phoenix’, where the possessive ‘my’ highlights the track’s position. “My Phoenix will rise.” The idea extends to faith too, the cause of every destructive neurosis that still manages to command thought and awe, an idea hardwired into DNA, too deep for any rational writing off.

If the vision of the Christ
My family sees
Is my blurry vision’s greatest enemy

Then I still try to tune it in
When I get lonely
You know I chase around this desert because I think that’s where you’ll be

Closing track ‘Leaving the Valley’ finds the Bazan family crammed into a U-haul and moving on from Arizona, and, as is the way of things, the conclusion triggers affection. A perfect home it might not have been, but it was a home nonetheless, and nothing is more appealing to those destined or cursed to keep moving on. “How do you stop a rolling stone?” Bazan asks, “How will you know you’re finally home?”

The songs ends with a list of places and images from the desert, an incantation of pure nostalgia and also in many ways the recipe for the present day Bazan—the shaping influences, the unshakeable wishes, the things made forever sacred purely by happenstance. If Phoenix is, as Bazan says, “the result of mining your past for who you are now,” then listening to the record feels like spending a restless night at his side, watching as he examines a disparate series of scenes from his life, his origin story, projected onto the ceiling, the room cast in a wistful Super 8 glow.

Phoenix is out now on Polyvinyl Records. You can get it in a variety of formats from the Polyvinyl webstore or the Pedro the Lion Bandcamp page.

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Oh, and there’ll one a month from now on, which will give us plenty of time to have a think of a new idea before we catch up to present day.

The year 2000 was remarkable for lots of reasons. We got to be the first people to see a new millennium in, well, a millennium, Putin took over within the Kremlin, Bush Jnr. all but made it into the Oval Office, films such as Gladiator, O Brother Where Art Thou? and the indomitable Chicken Run thrilled the public, and, most importantly, Roberto Di Matteo won the cup (again). There were also some pretty notable musical releases, and we’ve cherry-picked some of our favourites (admittedly in retrospect) for your listening pleasure below:

Tracklisting:

1) Shellac – Prayer to God
2) The New Pornographers – Letter From an Occupant
3) Pedro the Lion – Simple Economics
4) Johnny Cash – I See A Darkness
5) Bratmobile – It’s Common But We Don’t Talk About It
6) Elliott Smith – Son of Sam
7) Cat Power – Satisfaction
8) Sleater Kinney – You’re No Rock ‘n Roll Fun
9) Lifter Puller – Nice Nice
10) At The Drive In – One Armed Scissor
11) Dillinger Four – Who Didn’t Kill Bambi?
12) Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Lift Yr. Skinny Fists, Like Antennas to Heaven…
13) Yo La Tengo – Everyday
14) Múm – Asleep On a Train
15) Sigur Ros – Staralfur
16) The Weakerthans – Left & Leaving
17) Damien Jurado – Johnny Go Riding
18) Songs:Ohia – The Ocean’s Nerves
19) Ryan Adams – Come Pick Me Up
20) Smog – Permanent Smile

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