If 2006's sumptuously accomplished "Etiquette" was Casiotone For The Painfully Alone's "The Queen Is Dead", this is his "Hatful of Hollow" - a selection of formative fragments which add up to an utterly satisfying whole. In expanding his musical palette from minimal battery-powered electronics to include strings, flutes, tabla and pedal-steel, Ashworth has lost none of his miniaturist's eye for detail. And his forensically acute two and three minute character-studies are all the more poignant for their (relatively) expansive new settings.
The journey from CFTPA's brutally stripped-down 1999 debut "Answering Machine Music" to the lavish pocket symphonies of "Etiquette" has taken in all manner of unexpected detours. And Advance Base Battery Life compiles musical snapshots of those drunken get-togethers and maudlin solo road-trips into a vivid and memorable photo-album. Where mumbled aphorisms once plunged into echoing chasms of reverb, now the impeccable electro-pop credentials of "White Corolla" and "Holly Hobby" are established with pristine clarity. And superficially surprising cover choices - Paul Simon's "Graceland", Missy Elliott's "Hot Boyz", and not one but two Bruce Springsteen tunes (each with the power to pluck at the heart-strings of even the most hardened Boss-sceptic) - soon reveal a beguiling internal logic.
