Lowertown – Ugly Duckling Union
New York duo Lowertown have announced their signing to Summer Shade and their highly anticipated new album Ugly Duckling Union, due out May 22nd.
Lead single “I Like You Alot” is a rare love song from the pair, detailing the physical sensations of infatuation over a spry drumbeat and lo-fi, twangy guitars.
The track “was written about the hope of a new crush, and the intoxicating feelings of admiring and fantasizing about someone from afar,” shared the band. “Loving someone without yet knowing them, and being filled with the idea of the potential time spent together. This thinking can become obsessive and compulsive, almost like a sickness taking over the body, but maybe not in a particularly bad way. It is also about the insecurity and the uncertainty about these feelings being reciprocated or un-reciprocated.”
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 colored 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 fanpages, 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.
Alongside today’s album announcement, the band have announced an extensive headline tour of North America, kicking off in late April and running through the end of June, culminating in a hometown show at New York’s Bowery Ballroom. Tickets are on sale Feb 13th at 10am local.
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 – Orange County, 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 Beard
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
#lowrtown