Owen Ashworth has announced Horrible Occurrences, Advance Base’s first new album of original material in over six years. Following 2018’s Animal Companionship and his 2021 covers album Wall Of Tears & Other Songs I Didn’t Write, the new one is out in December. Today, we get the lead single and the album’s opener “The Year I Lived In Richmond.”

This song is not about Virginia. Richmond, in Ashworth’s world, is a fictional town “where all the bad memories live” and serves as a major concept for Horrible Occurrences. It’s a gentle, spare synth tune that glosses over the violent goings-on in an unassuming town. Here’s what Ashworth says about it:

I’ve never lived in a place called Richmond. “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 2000s. (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.

Watch Aaron Sewards’ animated music video for “The Year I Lived In Richmond” and see the full tracklist for Horrible Occurrences below.

TRACKLIST:
01 “The Year I Lived In Richmond”
02 “The Tooth Fairy”
03 “Big Chris Electric”
04 “How You Got Your Picture On The Wall”
05 “Rene Goodnight”
06 “The One About The Rabbit In The Snow”
07 “Brian’s Golden Hour”
08 “Little Sable Point Lighthouse”
09 “Andrew & Meagan”
10 “Premonition”
11 “Richmond”

Horrible Occurrences is out 12/6 via Run For Cover.