Recently after 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 might need identified for the reason that 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 good friend who has been identified 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 method I may solely dream of remembering anyone I’ve ever identified.
Throughout his work with Casiotone For The Painfully Alone and Advance Base, most of Owen Ashworth’s greatest characters inside his greatest songs are outlined by vestiges of their previous – issues like the will to inform an ex-friend about hometown gossip as a result of they’re “The Solely Different Woman From Again Residence,” or the stubbornness to stay out a depressing “Chilly White Christmas” alone in a primary grownup house as a result of our important character gained’t be the one to place her tail between her legs and name residence. Generally 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 in case you depart you’re pretty much as good as useless.
On Horrible Occurrences, Advance Base’s first album since 2018, Ashworth’s protagonists are pushed even additional into the forefront due to the sparsest preparations of his profession. Whereas minimalistic instrumentation isn’t surprising from an Owen Ashworth mission, there’s a noticeable lack of the extra lush, glowing electronics that may be discovered on earlier albums. However little is misplaced by means of the subtraction. As a substitute, the echoing keys and Omnichord thrives act extra like frames for what could be seen as Ashworth’s most bold lyrical mission so far. The manufacturing decisions maintain his voice firmly on the middle of every music till an actual distinction is simplest – often within the type of simply sufficient fuzz to obscure the listeners confidence within the actuality offered by the lyrics.
It’s a uniform aesthetic for a group of songs that, for the primary time in Ashworth’s profession, stay in the identical world, continuously intertwining with one another. Richmond – not the one in Virginia or another variety of actual life Richmonds – is a city (presumably someplace within the Midwest primarily based on the Kroger identify drop) the place, effectively, solely horrible issues occur. The album begins with the information that there was a serial killer on the unfastened for the yr 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.
