Lowertown
- bizzarre
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
New York duo Lowertown share new video for "Forgive Yourself" as UK/EU tour dates begin. New Album "Ugly Duckling Union" out now via Summer Shade.
Today, Lowertown, the New York duo of Olivia Osby and Avsha Weinberg, have shared a new video for “Forgive Yourself,” which is taken from their critically acclaimed new album, Ugly Duckling Union (out now via Summer Shade).
The video is released ahead of the band’s much-anticipated UK and EU tour dates, which began last night at The Gran Social in Dublin and includes a London date at Hackney’s Oslo on 7th Sept. The tour follows an extensive North American run and will mark the band’s first UK shows in three years.
The lo-fi fever dream-like video (directed by Reno Silver) see the duo hold up in their apartment as the world comes to an end. A blunt yet compassionate meditation on shame, “Forgive Yourself” is one of the album’s most memorable moments, as the hook-led vocals come alive in chorus to sing-shout “And it’s you who can’t make a sacrifice / And it’s you who can’t make the same mistake twice / It’s hard to forgive, it’s hard to forgive yourself”.
Speaking on the track, Osby says
“This song was written after a breakup where neither party was at fault, and both of us greatly loved each other, but I saw myself not feeling capable of handling the relationship and becoming a person I didn’t like to the one I loved. I began to be consumed by an immense amount of shame, guilt, and self-hatred.
Forgive yourself is quite literally about learning to forgive yourself after facing your shadow self. It’s about not getting sucked into the shame and guilt and being able to accept your imperfections and the wrongdoings of the past. It’s about still being able to love yourself despite your mistakes and faults and being able to let go and move forward.
We are all imperfect beings that are bound to make mistakes and hurt each other but are still deserving of love and forgiveness.
These lyrics take a much different tone than previous Lowertown albums. They come from a more removed and arial view. They are written from a bandaged, healing wound rather than a fresh, bleeding cut.
Still sore and sensitive, but not an immediate unfiltered reaction to a feeling. Lyrics in previous albums came from a place of me (the author) being helplessly affected by everything around, a victim reacting to different people and situations.
Instead of being a pinball, deflecting and reacting to these things, I am empowered in the situation, where I’m realizing my own agency and how I affect others, instead of just how they affect me.”
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, 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.
The previous single, “Mice Protection” was the first single written for the new album and was an ode to “to Avsha’s rat infested house that all of Ugly Duckling Union was recorded in”.
Before that “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).
Lead single “I Like You A Lot” is a rare love song from the pair, detailing the physical sensations of infatuation over a spry drumbeat and lo-fi, twangy guitars. The country-tinged “Worst Friend” arrived with a video where the close-knit duo killed time in a seemingly uninhabited small town.
Tour dates
September 1st - Dublin, IRE @ The Grand Social
September 3rd - Leeds, UK @ Belgrave Music Hall
September 4th - Glasgow, UK @ Nice n Sleazy
September 5th - Manchester, UK @ Manchester Psych Fest @ YES (Basement)
September 6th - Bristol, UK @ Exchange
September 7th - London, UK @ Oslo
September 9th - Paris, FR @ Chinois
September 12th - Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso (Upstairs)
September 15th - Cologne, GER @ Bumann & Sohn
September 16th - Hamburg, GER @ Reeperbahn Festival
September 18th - Berlin, GER @ Urban Spree
September 19th - Copenhagen, DK @ Forbrændingen
September 22nd - Schorndorf, GER @ Manufaktur
September 23rd - Aarau, CH @ KIFF
September 24th - Torino, IT @ Spazio 211
September 25th - Milano, IT @ Arci Bellezza
September 26th - Rome, IT @ Wishlist
Tickets here
