Lowertown
- bizzarre
- 2 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Lowertown release new single & video "Big Thumb" taken from their new album Ugly Duckling Union out 22nd May Via-Summer Shade.
Lowertown, the New York duo comprised of Olivia Osby and Avsha Weinberg, release “Big Thumb,” the latest from their recently announced new album Ugly Duckling Union, due out May 22nd via Summer Shade.
On “Big Thumb” Lowertown showcase how far they’ve come since their early days in Atlanta. In an unkempt folk-jazz murmur, Weinberg slurs his words with palpable heart, while Osby’s lush vocal melodies and harmonica encircle to haunting effect. The track arrives with a surreal video directed by Jack Haven (I Saw The TV Glow).
“‘Big Thumb’ was written during Olive’s obsession with collecting newspaper clippings and found pieces of writing. She had always wanted to write a song in the way the 90’s industrial scene had by using newspaper clippings to inspire lyrics.
Olive collected many different clippings and writings for us and spread them out on the ground, so that when we would begin to play together, Olive on harmonica and me on 12-string guitar, we could sing the words that inspired us most,”
Weinberg says of the track.
“What stuck was an almost mantra-like repetition of the words ‘Holding out the Big Thumb’ which became the song's conceptual core. The song became a reflection on the feeling of directionlessness in our generation, and how the paths of life that were carved out for previous generations are now void. We are left to drift along aimlessly or hopefully carve out some brand-new path.”
The songwriting partnership of Olivia Osby and Avsha Weinberg, the last few years saw the prolific pair teetering on the brink. From constant touring and a separation from their label to creative frustrations and an unhealthy attachment to one another, their artistic partnership and, more importantly, their friendship were on shaky ground - especially since these experiences were coloured by the disorienting intensity of their late teens and early 20s. It became clear that the two had to revisit their roots.
Those roots trace back to Atlanta, Georgia: in the forests, the soon-to-be abandoned venues, the makeshift punk communities, to Weinberg’s family basement, but those roots also formed somewhere else entirely: the internet. The band grew up on Tumblr fan pages, Reddit forums, digital spaces that had not yet been corporatized. Places whose fandoms eventually leapt from the virtual to the physical, bringing people together to meet at concerts, coffee shops, and conventions to discuss their obsessions and connect over shared interests.
During the pandemic, they watched these places change, become commodified, and disappear; people no longer had these physical spaces to be solely amongst friends with shared interests where communities and fandoms could strengthen. Out of this vacuum, the Ugly Duckling Union was born.
Inspired by the conceptual creativity of bands like Gorillaz and the emphasis on the communal concert experience of Fugazi, Lowertown’s new album, fittingly titled Ugly Duckling Union, is the conceptual world of Dale the duckling protagonist and his companions as they attempt to band together to defeat LBH, a tyrannical media corporation set on separating and isolating in their pursuit of control.
Through the band’s online connection with fans, their Discord server with channels for their community to share their own art and talk to the band, and their Instagram and YouTube pages, where they have built a cult following, they have already begun to bridge the gap between the digital and physical. Lowertown shows are often giddily attended by those who have met through their web of online fandom. Ugly Duckling Union, accompanied by a conceptual story, a playable Minecraft world, a handbook, plush dolls, and drawn comics by Doctor Nowhere (Silas Orion), is creating the space to be obsessed together again.
Ugly Duckling Union was fully written, recorded, produced, and mixed by Osby and Weinberg, and that insular, hands-on ethic is something they cherish - and has never waned. Although Lowertown are the sole caretakers of their art, their new album title is a celebration of the meaningful community they’ve built.
“Our home has been the people who make us feel understood, and the music that makes us feel understood,”
Osby explains.
“I feel like Avsha and I have just been two misfits doing stuff together, and I feel like this music is for people like us - it’s for the misfit toys.”
There’s a lot of freedom in being an outsider, and that’s ultimately what Ugly Duckling Union is about finding and freeing yourself through community. And what could be more freeing, self-confronting, and funny than making a beautiful record with your ride-or-die, misfit-toy best friend?
Photo by Reno Silver
Tour Dates
April 28th - Philadelphia, PA @ The Loft
April 29th - Boston, MA @ The Sinclair
May 1st - Burlington, VT @ Radio Bean
May 2nd - Montreal @ Ministere
May 4th - Ottawa, CAN @ 27 Club
May 5th - Toronto, CAN @ Hard Luck Room
May 7th - Cleveland, OH @ Mahall's
May 8th - Indianapolis, IN @ HiFi
May 9th - Chicago, IL @ Subterranean
May 10th - Whitefish Bay, WI @ The Argo
May 12th - Minneapolis, MN @ 7th St. Entry
May 13th - Des Moines, IA @ xBK
May 14th - Lawrence, KS @ The White Schoolhouse
May 16th - Denver, CO @ Larimer Lounge
May 18th - Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court
May 19th - Boise, ID @ Shrine Social Club
May 22nd - Seattle, WA @ Baba Yaga
May 23rd - Portland, OR @ Polaris Hall
May 26th - San Francisco, CA @ Rickshaw Stop
May 29th - Santa Ana, CA @ Constellation Room
May 30th - Los Angeles, CA @ The Roxy
May 31st - San Diego, CA @ Quartyard
June 8th - Phoenix, AZ @ Valley Bar
June 11th - San Antonio, TX @ Paper Tiger
June 12th - Austin, TX @ 29th St Ballroom
June 13th - Dallas, TX @ Club Dada
June 15th - Nashville, TN @ The End
June 17th - Atlanta, GA @ Masquerade (HELL)
June 19th - Jacksonville, FL @ Hard Love
June 20th - Orlando, FL @ Conduit
June 22nd - Miami, FL @ Lincoln’s Bear
June 23rd - Tampa, FL @ The Orpheum
June 25th - Durham, NC @ The Pinhook
June 26th - Washington, DC @ Songbyrd
June 27th - New York City, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
Tickets are available via lowertown.band.
