Horrible Occurrences Advance Base

Horrible Occurrences is the title of the new Advance Base album,and there is truth in advertising. In these songs—all centeredaround a fictional town called Richmond and featuring an interlinkedcast of characters—you will hear stories of death and disappear-ance, climactic confrontations and unsolved mysteries. “Richmondis just this place where all the bad memories live,” Owen Ashworthexplains, and nearly 30 years into his songwriting career, none ofhis records have packed quite the emotional intensity of this one. And yet something alchemical happens in the telling of these tales.Like a masterful short story collection, Horrible Occurrences isinspiring and alive, idiosyncratic and electric, pulling you closer witheach word.

In the six years since his last full-length collection of originals,2018’s Animal Companionship, Ashworth gathered ideas fromperforming live and traveling around the country, returning to citiesthat he once called home and revisiting old ghosts, memories,and fragments of unfinished ideas. 

Blending truth and fiction into adreamlike composite, the songs convey the winding path our mem-ory takes as the years go by, giving voice to a subconscious that isstill unpacking old memories for new wisdom.Drawing inspiration from the otherworldly loneliness depicted on’80s masterpieces like Arthur Russell’s World of Echo and BruceSpringsteen’s Nebraska, the music never crowds Ashworth’s de-tailed storytelling but it also never feels auxiliary. These are beauti-ful songs, but they stick with you for their ability to strike dissonant,unforgettable emotional chords. 

It is this pervasive empathy inAshworth’s songwriting—along with his writerly gift for clear settingsand complex characters—that has made him a guiding light for somany independent artists.The things that happen throughout Horrible Occurrences are whatwe tend to call “unspeakable”—events that draw gut-level respons-es just from acknowledging that they could happen. But part of thetriumph of the record is how simply and generously Ashworth findsthe language to share them. For the characters in these songswho make it out okay, these are the types of memories they will betossing and turning their whole lives, waiting for quiet moments toconfide them among the people they trust. For the rest of us, theyare signs of life along the highway on a dark, snowy night: remind-ers that, as isolated as we may feel, we are not alone on the road.