For his new Advance Base album Horrible Occurrences, Owen Ashworth invented a fictional town named Richmond in which to set his latest stories, describing it as "a vague nowhere place" where “all the bad memories live.” Recorded at his Advance Basement home studio in Oak Park, IL, the album includes three previously released songs (2022's "Little Sable Point Lighthouse" and 2023's "How You Got Your Picture on the Wall" and "Rene Goodnight"), along with today's new single, "The Year I Lived in Richmond".

"I've never lived in a place called Richmond," explains Ashworth in a press release that strongly hints at a connection with his former home of Oakland, saying:

"‘The Year I Lived in Richmond’ describes my memories of a series of violent crimes that occurred in a city where I briefly lived in the early 2000’s. (Here’s a hint: it has the same cadence as Richmond.) I haven’t been able to corroborate the events through internet searches or conversations with old friends from that period of my life. Maybe I dreamt up the whole thing? I really don’t know. Over time, the events became a kind of personal mystery, and then that mystery became a song. The song took on a life of its own, a fiction more vivid than my hazy memories, with its own specific details and invented names. I’ve been living with some version of this song in my head for more than twenty years now and it finally feels like the right time to share it with you."

The song comes complete with a gorgeously painted music video by Japan-based artist Aaron Sewards, who Ashworth has known since their two former bands – I Know I Have No Collar and Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – toured together in the UK. As Ashworth explains:

"A few years back, I asked Aaron to paint Little Sable Point Lighthouse, a lighthouse in Michigan that I wrote an Advance Base song about (it’s on the new album). Along with his lighthouse painting, Aaron sent a short animation of the painting in progress and it just looked like magic to me. I asked Aaron if he would make a full music video of animated landscapes for ‘The Year I Lived in Richmond.’ I loved the nostalgic quality of his landscape paintings and the way they seemed to conjure memories that felt simultaneously familiar and dreamlike. Aaron also shared my fascination with the Midwestern United States. His landscapes seemed like they would be a perfect match for a song about a middle American town that only exists in imagination. Aaron and I discussed each scene described in the song’s lyrics and I sent him some reference photos that I’d taken around my home in Oak Park, Illinois. Through the filter of Aaron’s watercolors, each image becomes a tangible location in the vague nowhere place of Richmond, the imaginary American town I describe in the song’s lyrics. The paintings become the memories of the narrator, coming into brief focus and then fading away again."

Watch the video below:

Out 6 December via Run For Cover, Horrible Occurrences is Ashworth's first album of original songs since 2018's Animal Companionship, and follows his 2021 covers record Wall of Tears & Other Songs I Didn't Write.

Horrible Occurrences tracklist:
1. The Year I Lived in Richmond
2. The Tooth Fairy
3. Big Chris Electric
4. How You Got Your Picture on the Wall
5. Rene Goodnight
6. The One About the Rabbit in the Snow
7. Brian’s Golden Hour
8. Little Sable Point Lighthouse
9. Andrew & Meagan
10. Premonition
11. Richmond

Ashworth is currently in the middle of a US tour, including a few dates opening for Cass McCombs. Full list of shows below:

09/24 Bethlehem, PA @ The Ice House
09/25 Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg *
09/26 Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s *
09/27 Baltimore, MD @ The Ottobar *
09/29 Richmond, VA @ house show
10/01 Durham, NC @ Duke Coffeehouse
10/10 Milwaukee, WI @ Lilliput Records
10/11 Madison, WI @ Communication
10/13 Minneapolis, MN @ Cloudland
10/14 Omaha, NE @ Reverb
10/15 Iowa City, IA @ PS1
10/16 Chicago, IL @ The Hideout &
12/06 Louisville, KY @ Surface Noise
120/7 Lexington, KY @ Green Lantern
12/08 Nashville, TN @ Drkmttr
12/09 Chattanooga, TN @ Woodshop
12/10 Knoxville, TN @ Pilot Light
12/11 Asheville, NC @ Static Age
12/12 Greensboro, NC @ Etc.
12/13 Chapel Hill, NC @ Local 506

* with Cass McCombs

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