ARTIST HIGHLIGHT - Lowertown, The Unyielding Indie Rockers this Generation Needs
Nash Jones - @_nash_jones
Content warning: This article contains mentions of childhood abuse. If you are experiencing abuse, please confide in a trusted person.
National Domestic Violence Hotline: (800)-799-7233
“I see you again with your friends/ I’m empty-handed tonight/ dressed down in my shirt and slacks/ you still find a way to make me feel ashamed/ it’s alright/ I’ll be gone soon anyway.” These were the first lines I heard from the indie duo “Lowertown,” consisting of Olive Osby and Avshalom Weinberg, known professionally as Olivia O. and Avsha.
Photo via Michael Cully
Olivia, slightly gravelly and quiet, singing about the tumultuous process of being a young adult, including friendships and awkward social situations, taking care of yourself, and learning what you want, all the while Avsha plays a winding guitar riff, and the crash of some intermittent drums sound, before building up then fading out at the end.
The aforementioned song is titled “Clown Car '' from Lowertown’s 2021 EP, The Gaping Mouth. I remember being struck by the cover artwork— which was created by Olivia, along with future cover art— a painting of the neck and head of a distorted human figure with a wide grin, dozens of little teeth disproportionate to the mouth size, and small, beady black eyes. The skin of the face itself also seems to be torn off, leaving these off-putting features surrounded by stark bright red. Other than loving their music, what I first admired about Lowertown was the fact that they were so unabashedly weird!
The title track for The Gaping Mouth was accompanied by a music video, the duo sitting back on a black leather couch, a grey-haired man wedged between them with long arms and huge hands stretching about the room. Ashva sits on his left, with long legs that extend around a coffee table in front of them. There is a tangible discontent in the room. The man is then with them in a car during a nighttime drive, still sandwiched between them, his hands hanging out opposite windows as Avsha stares miserably out his, and Olivia looks across the man at him.
None of them are driving. Neither of them make eye contact with the man. They exit the car and Olivia begins to perform on the hood to a small gathering of very immersed people. Avsha is sitting down on top of the car, legs extending past where the car meets the concrete. As Olivia sings the refrain, “You are the iris in my eye,” a startling bright light shines onto her, and she rubs her eyes. As she covers her face with her hands, blood shoots from her eyes at a high velocity as she simultaneously turns her head, covering the faces of the people in the crowd. The song ends.
While it was the first project I’d heard of Lowertown’s, The Gaping Mouth is far from the duo’s most recent endeavor. Their full-length LP, I Love to Lie, was released in October 2022, and I often cite it as one of my favorite albums of that year. Continuing their trend of strange artwork, the album cover is a surrealist piece, a room in which exists two humanlike, androgynous figures, molded from the hardwood floor and flowing from the blue curtains. The album artwork itself is already mesmerizing, beckoning listeners in just to see what it’s all about. It doesn’t disappoint. The general feel of this album is “angsty 20-year-olds with guitars” in the absolute best way possible. Their raw and explosive sound in tracks like “I’m Not,” “My Friends,” and “No Way” are where they really shake you by the shoulders and tell you, “I’m pissed off, deal with it!” On the other hand, they have more quiet and contemplative tracks such as “It’s It’s It’s,” a quiet acoustic track with occasional trills of electronic sounds and a drum buildup in the interlude before the final chorus.
The standout track of the album is arguably “At the End,” an ominous narrative where Avsha takes the lead vocal. The song seems to be about an abusive father figure, who is referred to as “my friend,” though the actions of this character clearly contradict that, with lines such as, “staring down from the top of the stairs, he/ holds my sister’s wet hair in his hands.” Avsha calls out to someone in the bridge, the instruments suddenly cutting out as he belts “hey you there!” Then, “i know who you are/ you’re the little girl/ and the old man with the dog.”
These lyrics seem to be addressing victims of abuse in the way that varying types of people can and have been through it. The song itself is characterized by frantic guitar and occasional chantlike vocals. The lyrics are vivid, yet, at times, confusing. Lowertown is, in many aspects, an odd band, but they don’t write about serious topics in an attempt to be “whimsical” or aestheticize them, which is important to recognize.
“Got a suitcase full of things you used to own/ it used to feel so heavy, but now i don’t know.” These are lines from “Bline,” the first song released from Lowertown’s most recent project, a four song EP, Skin of My Teeth. The clearest way to describe this track is an existential crisis, but even that is so general. It’s the kind that makes you feign apathy while, really, you’re sick to your stomach. You can almost picture the internal conflict of “Bline” manifesting as outer stillness: the juxtaposition of a jumbled mind, the knees tucking into the chest as “i don’t know, i don’t know, i don’t know,” is repeated continually. “Bline” is instrumentally sparse, majority bass and drums, with little electronic trills and occasional wobbles of what sounds like sheet metal.
The rich, yet moody track is in direct contrast with its next song, “Root Canal,” a casual, guitar-centered song with both acoustic and electric. The lyrics themselves are quite angry, though, almost taunting, “don’t want nobody/ still want a second go?” “hope you get hurt tryna crawl out of a dirty place/ hope you break some bones.”
The cover art is, as always, unique and strange. The border is a light peachy color with several teeth and red crosses, while front and center is a jumble of color and patterns, several outlines of humanlike figures— perhaps each a “Marionette,” which is the title of the final of the four songs— with animal traits, including one with large wings and a candle on its head, and one with floppy rabbit ears, sitting on the back of a spotted cow. It’s hard to tell what you’re getting into with cover art like this, but it ends up being early 20’s existentialism, bitterness and pissed-off feelings at the end of a relationship, and navigating the modern world as a young person.
What is Lowertown planning next? Well, they made a recent post on Instagram, playing an unreleased song of theirs, mentioning that they had been working on their next album. Meanwhile, Olivia is supporting Drop Nineteens on their upcoming tour this October, along with having started a new project, Child Star, whose first single, “City Song,” is out now.
Lowertown is an incredibly talented duo whose contributions to indie rock should be widely noted. We can’t wait to see what they do in the future.
