It’s no secret that we’re big fans of Owen Ashworth’s music here at WTD. The most recent Advance Base record, Nephew in the Wild (which made our Favourite Albums of 2015 list) was yet another example of Ashworth’s supreme talent for songwriting and storytelling, conjuring a whole range of dysfunctional characters doing their best (or worst) to exist in everyday America. While the situations in which these people find themselves are often boring, bleak and pretty difficult to escape, there is almost always a warm, human vein running through the strata of sadness, nostalgia and responsibilities which crush down with a geological force you will most likely recognise. As we described in our review:
“While it’s easy to cast [Ashworth] as the lonely boy in front of a keyboard, the truth, at least in my eyes, is that he’s often hardly there at all, a transparent gateway into the lives of people you’ve never met feeling things you thought you had to suffer through alone”
In Bloomington is a recording of a full-band Advance Base show from December 11, 2015, presumably in Bloomington. The date and locale aren’t the important part of that sentence though, rather the ‘full-band’ descriptor – what the press release describes as a ‘Dream Band’, assembled for two nights only. The line-up features players from Okkervil River, Shearwater, Mike Adams at His Honest Weight and Sun Kil Moon, as well as Ashworth’s previous project Casiotone For the Painfully Alone. To give them their full due, Ashworth (himself responsible for the Rhodes, autoharp, loops & vocals) is joined by Mike Adams (drums & Mellotron samples), Nick Ammerman (bass), Matthew Barnhart (guitar & tambourine), Edward Crouse (piano) and Howard Draper (lap steel guitar & tambourine) to flesh out the humble solo efforts into things far more exuberant and rich.
The setlist draws mainly from Nephew in the Wild but also contains three tracks from 2012’s equally great A Shut-In’s Prayer (an album which we described as “a tangle of hopes and nostalgia… melancholy without melodrama”) and even a rather nice rendition of Etiquette stand-out/eternal comfort, ‘Bobby Malone Moves Home’. As we’ve mentioned already, the full-band set up elevates the songs to another level, the communal effort managing to inject a certain amount of joy into even the most lonely characters, even if it’s just the small wonder of being alive.
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In Bloomington is set for release on the 8th July both digitally and on vinyl, the latter coming with packaging illustrated by Dan Black of Landland. You can pre-order it now via Orindal Records. Those of you who live in North America will most likely have a good chance to catch Advance Base on tour this summer, with a whole host of dates lined up with some pretty cool people. Check out the list below:
June 01 – Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall &
June 02 – Pontiac, MI @ Pike Room at The Crofoot &
June 03 – Columbus, OH @ Double Happiness &
June 04 – Cleveland, OH @ Grog Shop &
June 21 – Eau Claire, WI @ Ambient Inks
June 22 – Sioux Falls, SD @ Total Drag
June 26 – Gimli, Manitoba @ Real Love Summer Fest
June 27 – Duluth, MN @ Red Herring Lounge
June 28 – Minneapolis, MN @ Turf Club %
July 11 – Chicago, IL @ Subterranean ?
July 13 – Denver, CO @ Hi-Dive
August 16 – Chicago, IL @ The Hideout *
August 17 – Bloomington, IN @ The Bishop *
August 18 – Cincinnati, OH @ MOTR Pub *
August 21 – Chapel Hill, NC @ Local 506 *
August 24 – Brooklyn, NY @ Silent Barn *
August 26 – Portland, ME @ Apohadion Theatre *^
August 27 – Bar Harbor, ME @ Lompoc Cafe *
August 28 – Montreal, Quebec @ Casa del Popolo *
August 29 2016 – Winooski, VT @ The Monkey House *
September 10 – Houston, TX @ The Satellite #
September 13 – Fayetteville, AR @ Nomads Music Lounge #
September 16 – St Louis, MO @ Foam #
& w/ Yoni & Geti
% w/ Air Traffic Controller
? w/ Told Slant, Bellows & Spencer Radcliffe
* w/ Hello Shark
^ w/ Lisa/Liza
# w/ Mike Adams at his Honest Weight