Horrible Occurrences is the title of the new Advance Base album, and there is truth in advertising. In these songs-all centered around a fictional town called Richmond and featuring an interlinked cast of characters-you will hear stories of death and disappearance, climactic confrontations and unsolved mysteries. “Richmond is just this place where all the bad memories live,” Owen Ashworth explains, and nearly 30 years into his songwriting career, none of his 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 is inspiring and alive, idiosyncratic and electric, pulling you closer with each word.In the six years since his last full-length collection of originals, 2018’s Animal Companionship, Ashworth gathered ideas from performing live and traveling around the country, returning to cities that he once called home a