Review Summary: Nothing happens here (affectionately).
Somebody Somewhere was my favorite show of 2024. Much like the city it’s based in -Manhattan, Kansas- you probably haven’t heard of it. There are no dragons. There are no billionaires. There are no fanciful murder plots. There’s just a group of friends in the middle of nowhere making do with what they have. Rarely have I seen any sort of media dress up its story less. The tragedies and triumphs of its characters are small and revealed at glacial pace, often remaining unresolved. Its most notable scenes revolve around eating ice cream and singing karaoke and sharing glances where you just hope the two people staring at each other are doing so with the same understanding -and you think they do!
Horrible Occurrences, the latest chapter from Advance Base fka Casiotone for the Painfully alone aka Owen Ashworth, is the perfect musical companion to exploring the small and ill-defined stories that often make up life outside of bustling cities. For the uninitiated, Owen’s musical universe is full of simple and playful melodies that could be mistaken for nursery rhymes or a non-committal jam session to match his mumbling but earnest voice delivering low-stakes tales. While his lo-fi storytelling has always played out more like intimate chats or the soundtrack to curating the perfect MySpace bulletin, the lights have somehow dimmed a little further to demand you scooch in just a little closer to perceive things properly as these melodies affectionately border on lullaby. However low you think the stakes can go, I assure you that they are not low enough.
Set in the fictional town of Richmond,
Horrible Occurrences is an impressionistic collection of stories from some of the people who live there. Some people die. Someone breaks their back. Someone gets caught in the lie of giving their daughter money from the “tooth fairy.” Someone explains at a dinner party to their friends that they might’ve seen a ghost while their partner leaves to make a beer run. These are not really earth-shattering tales. We often don’t really know who these people are or what they do or who they are to each other, and it’s easy to imagine that these might not even be the most scandalous or affecting moments in this fictional place. But there’s just enough charm and specificity on offer to get the idea that this could be a real place and these could be the tiny stacks of history that haunt it.
For those keeping score, yes, this is a music album with little in the way of melody about stories with little in the way of characterization or plot -the sales pitch here is
not an easy one. "Brian's Golden Hour" is the closest thing you get to a barnburner around these parts and it'll more than likely have folks asking, "that was it?" This thing is quiet. It’s cozy. It’s simple. It’s, to be blunt, a vibe.
Horrible Occurrences is a warm blanket during this time of year where the days can stretch on forever and the nights can swallow me whole.
