Olivia O – Hole
Today, Olivia O, one half of the NYC by way of Atlanta duo Lowertown, has shared “Hole,” the second preview off her sophomore album No Bones, Sickly Sweet due out November 1st.
Existing firmly in a canon of defiant outsider musicians that stretches from Linda Perhacs and Karen Dalton through to Alex G and Salvia Palth, No Bones, Sickly Sweet is a strident statement of Olivia’s resilience as well as a love letter to the rich, restorative power of DIY music.
“Hole” is a rare moment of self-determination on an album otherwise interested in the way that hitting rock bottom can reveal truths about daily life, its sing-along chorus becoming a mantra over spare electric guitars. “It’s that sad, sickening feeling in your chest that it’s over and u have no longer have an attraction to someone you used to love,” shares Olivia, “thinking of them turns your stomach clenches and turns, and the memories together have become tainted like fresh milk gone sour.”
For 99% of artists, the music industry is a meat grinder, constantly whirring, forever hungry for something fresh to pulverize. At only 22, Olivia Osby knows this better than most; a semi-public figure online since she was 14 , breaking through with her band Lowertown at 18, Osby has been around the block enough times to have met her fair share of people who want to optimize her art and on-sell her dreams. It’s enough to break anyone – which makes it all the more remarkable that No Bones, Sickly Sweet, her self-released second album as Olivia O, is less a capitulation to the immense pressures that the industry places on its young female stars as much as an outright rejection of them. It embraces the things we’re taught to reject – pain, boredom, quiet – and uses them as fuel for an album that’s at turns raw, upsetting and profoundly beautiful.
Tour Dates:
10/19 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Made *
10/20 – Northampton, MA @ Iron Horse *
10/21 – Montreal, QC @ Bar Le Ritz *
10/22 – Toronto, ON @ Lee’s Palace *
10/23 – Chicago, IL @ Metro *
* supporting Drop Nineteens
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