The ascent of Atlanta-reared duo Lowertown was undeniably quick—perhaps even too quick. Olivia Osby and Avsha Weinberg were still teenagers when they inked a deal with Dirty Hit Records, with whom they released an EP every year since 2019 up until 2022 when they instead dropped their debut full-length I Love to Lie, leading to extensive touring with Wet Leg, Porches, and beabadoobee. And while a label deal with an esteemed indie, supporting slots for an Obama-approved artist, and an in-depth tour diary with a highly respected publication (we may be biased) basically make up the indie-rock hat trick, Lowertown seem eager to start again from the beginning.
Which may not come as too much of a surprise if you read their frank commentaries on the music industry in the aforementioned profile. Yet rather than defeatedly tapping out, their new EP Skin of My Teeth feels as much like a formal conclusion to their chapter with Dirty Hit (the new EP was released independently) as it does a back-to-basics resetting of their formula (it’s yet another EP, after all). Opening with a skin-crawly repetition of the mantra that lent itself to their recent album’s title, and closing with a disaffected finalization of a relatively early recording, the EP ironically sees the band sounding more comfortably at-ease than ever.
With the EP being self-released today, you can stream the project and read Osby and Weinberg’s commentary on each track below.
1. “Bline”
Avsha Weinberg: This song was built around the mantra “I love to lie.” I recorded myself on loop repeating the phrase in hopes of being struck with inspiration, and after a few hours, the bass line was written in the basement of his Atlanta home. The structure was shaped in the studio in London, both of us being between bouts of illness and general emotional isolation—the isolation from having lived in a new city (especially in a different country) and not knowing anyone, as well as the isolation from being the youngest person in the room inspired a sense of dejection.
2. “Root Canal”
AW: “Root Canal” was written in 2021 during the throes of the pandemic, during which Olive and I were spending every day at each other’s homes waiting to see if we would be able to tour ever after having two tours canceled. In hopes of writing something upbeat, the song was born.
Olivia Osby: The song’s big lyrical inspiration came after I had my first bad breakup. It was written about someone who got a lot of enjoyment when something went wrong in my life and held a lot of feelings of jealousy and resentment toward me.
3. “Obscurity”
OO: “Obscurity” was written while we were both stuck together in quarantine in a one-bedroom flat in London. We only had an acoustic guitar and a microphone. One night while Avsha was in the shower, I recorded and looped a progression of five chords to a bossa nova rhythm and sang some poetry on top. Avsha really liked the start of the idea, and for that week we began to flesh out the song. He wanted it to feel calm and composed, but still instrumentally dense and wooden. He wanted it to feel like the apartment that we’d been confined to in London.
The song was written about being around people of high status and wealth and dealing with feelings of inferiority, that I don’t fit in—but then, after some time, coming to the realization that we all end up in the same place when it’s over, so these hierarchies are just constructed and meaningless. Everyone is just an inconsequential blip in an ever-expanding timeline, and knowing that is a very comforting thought to me.
4. “Marionette”
AW: “Marionette” was written at first as an attempt to make a two-step song, and it eventually devolved into a sinister, angry song. We wanted the production to feel eerie and discomforting, yet still with the warmth that comes between the two of us. I decided to write the melody with a slide and improvise with myself until I felt the tone of the song was eerie and delicate—again, playing the song on repeat for hours until the lead and the direction was understood. Being the oldest song on the project, it took multiple years to fully realize what we wanted and where we wanted to put the song. This project feels like the conclusion of an era, and this feels like the perfect punctuation point.
