Recently once I go see my mother and father, I’ve began joking with my mother that the very first thing she does is replace me on all of the devastating issues which have occurred to folks she is aware of, knew, or thinks I may need recognized because the final time I noticed her. Youngsters I sat subsequent to in band class who have been killed in bike accidents, brothers of classmates of my mother and my aunt who had coronary heart assaults, the son of a sister of her buddy who has been recognized with most cancers – these folks a pair levels of separation away from us who’re experiencing a worst-case situation. It’s extra compassionate than gossipy, and it’s a window into the life my mother has lived exterior of being my mother; she remembers members of household timber from her tiny hometown in a manner I might solely dream of remembering anyone I’ve ever recognized.
Throughout his work with Casiotone For The Painfully Alone and Advance Base, most of Owen Ashworth’s finest characters inside his finest songs are outlined by vestiges of their previous – issues like the need to inform an ex-friend about hometown gossip as a result of they’re “The Solely Different Lady From Again House,” or the stubbornness to stay out a depressing “Chilly White Christmas” alone in a primary grownup house as a result of our principal character gained’t be the one to place her tail between her legs and name residence. Typically they’re outlined by a resentment towards individuals who did get out whereas they sit of their “White Jetta,” stating in no unsure phrases that if you happen to go away you’re nearly as good as lifeless.
On Horrible Occurrences, Advance Base’s first album since 2018, Ashworth’s protagonists are pushed even additional into the forefront because of the sparsest preparations of his profession. Whereas minimalistic instrumentation isn’t surprising from an Owen Ashworth undertaking, there’s a noticeable lack of the extra lush, glowing electronics that may be discovered on earlier albums. However little is misplaced by the subtraction. As an alternative, the echoing keys and Omnichord prospers act extra like frames for what may be seen as Ashworth’s most formidable lyrical undertaking up to now. The manufacturing selections maintain his voice firmly on the heart of every track till an actual distinction is best – normally within the type of simply sufficient fuzz to obscure the listeners confidence within the actuality introduced by the lyrics.
It’s a uniform aesthetic for a set of songs that, for the primary time in Ashworth’s profession, dwell in the identical world, continuously intertwining with one another. Richmond – not the one in Virginia or some other variety of actual life Richmonds – is a city (presumably someplace within the Midwest primarily based on the Kroger identify drop) the place, properly, solely horrible issues occur. The album begins with the data that there was a serial killer on the free for the 12 months that our first narrator lived in Richmond. That serial killer will get killed by a neighbor named Deborah Lee Hill, however the entire saga is so closely mentioned that even the youngsters find out about her stabbing that killer to loss of life. Observe two, “The Tooth Fairy,” finds a child who misplaced her tooth terrified after being left alone at residence briefly by her father who wanted to interrupt a $20 to place cash below her pillow. I ponder if she knew about Deborah and the serial killer who tried to interrupt into her residence. I’ve to assume she did.
