Advance Base is the new musical project by Chicago, Illinois singer, songwriter, & producer Owen Ashworth (formerly of Casiotone for the Painfully Alone). Recorded at home & in piano practice rooms at the Chicago Public Library, A Shut-In's Prayer is an intimate collection of deliberately crafted but decidedly lo-fi torch songs, waltzes & ballads. Accompanying himself on his Rhodes 54 electric piano, Ashworth sings nostalgic stories about lost loves, childhood friends, estranged siblings, & hard feelings over simple drum machine rhythms & spare percussion. The additional arrangements that fill out these ten songs (courtesy of Nick Ammerman, Edward Crouse & Jody Weinmann) intertwine gentle upright piano melodies & expansive electric bass, filling the spaces between plainly-sung harmony vocals & strummed autoharp chords, with the occasional creaking floorboard or snapping reverb spring to remind you of the cramped rooms where this album was recorded. It's a different sound than one might expect from the dude from Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, but Ashworth's keen ear for melody & idiosyncratic skill as a lyricist have only improved in recent years, pushing his memorable songwriting in all new directions. At age 35, Ashworth has a lot of music left in him, & he's just getting started again. This deluxe edition of A Shut-In's Prayer includes tracks from two vinyl-only singles, plus a remix of "Summer Music" (featuring Julie Byrne & Gordon Ashworth). "This is an album of interiors, the childhood memories and small epiphanies of stay-at home-dreamers" -MOJO “A smart progression from Ashworth’s Casiotone recordings, presenting that project’s bittersweet introspection with more nuanced production... A Shut-In's Prayer is arguably the strongest album of Owen Ashworth's career thus far" -PITCHFORK