Album Review: Animal Companionship by Advance Base

Owen Ashworth's third album as Advance Base, Animal Companionship, includes several songs about pets, and their owners' relationships with them. Ashworth explains that even though he doesn't have a dog, he was finding himself giving advice to all of his friends with dogs, and it made him consider what pets mean to humans. Opening song "True Love Death Dream" illustrates the vitality of owning a pet while facing the death of a loved one, while "Dolores & Kimberly" and "Your Dog" describe the type of void left by a divorce that owning a pet can at least help to fill.

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Owen Ashworth, formally known as Casiotone For The Painfully Alone but now known as Advance Base, tells short stories. They've gotten a little longer since the Casiotone days, but they're still about ordinary people living ordinary lives, in this case lives that frequently involve dogs. Over the beatless drone of Your Dog, he tells the story of a guy that misses his ex's dog Walter a lot more than his ex, and the waltz-style instrumental Walt's Fantasy is a cute throwback to this.

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