Interview with Lowertown - November 2023
Lowertown are an American indie band based in Atlanta/New York. I interviewed them after their gig at the Classic Grand in Glasgow in 2023, after their set supporting cult band, Wednesday.
It was November, I remember being on the bus back to Glasgow, playing Match Triple 3D on my phone. I tried to ignore this dizzy feeling, knowing I would be interviewing a band that my sister had introduced to me a year prior.
With lyrics like “You are the sun in the sky, wake up and miss most of you as you dip behind the tree line.” There’s bittersweet angst in their music, which drew me to catch them in Glasgow.
I arrived at the Classic Grand with my heart in my mouth. Making my way up the sticky stairs, I passed fur trapper hats brushing my face, and indie boyfriends in the middle of licking Rizla papers. With an overall scent similar to a church hall, I was half expecting to find Lowertown under a rainbow coloured parachute. Instead, there was the band Wednesday, who Lowertown had been supporting around Europe, tongue trilling in what could have been a Seance.
In the green room, lead singer Olive reflected on the Glasgow show, “ I’m still processing the show. We just came off stage, and it was cool. There were a lot of people here tonight. I think some top ones for me were Brighton in Bristol, just because those were headline sets. So we got to play longer. And it's just, it's different headlining versus supporting just because you feel more in your element.”
I asked about their latest single, “Root Canal,” a jangly, lo-fi track with contrasting lyrics: “You force my face into the ground / And made me swallow the rocks and broken glass / And now my stomach has some holes.” “
“Yeah, we wrote that one a while ago. It started with an instrumental Ashva did on the guitar. I wrote it after my first breakup. I was with someone who was very jealous of me, but sort of underneath. And anytime something bad happened, you're happy, and then when anything good happened, I felt guilty about it. And I eventually realised I feel guilty. And I would tell them, like good news. And that was sort of the start of like, the downfall of that relationship. So that's what that was about.”
Guitarist Ashva chimed in, “I wrote that one in my basement in Atlanta. I'm trying to remember what I was listening to at the time. I think I was just really bored. I think I was, I was in high school at the time.
And usually what I would do is I'd come home from school, or like, when I would come home, from school and like, go to a coffee shop, and then I'd go home, and probably from seven til midnight, I would play in my basement, just like a guitar in my room or something. And I was like, I'm gonna write a fun song because we generally write pretty dark songs, slower ones. And I was like, I'm gonna do a joyful song. And then it always ends up being a little bit negative.”
On this tour, Lowertown played The Moth Club as part of the Mirrors Festival in October 2023. Olive lamented, “We've been to the Moth club a few times when we lived here. And I just love that venue. And I love the vibe there, it was cool. That one was crazy. And it was right before Halloween. It was like the day after my birthday. So it was just like a million things.”
By the time they had made it to Glasgow, Lowertown had been on the road for a couple of weeks alongside cult band Wednesday, stretching from Amsterdam to Birmingham, and plenty in between.
Olive reflected on their time touring, “I'm so tired. Honestly, a month is the maximum amount of time I think a person should tour unless they really love touring.
It's just really hard on your body, and I'm very weak physically, so I get sick all the time, and the weather here it's just crazy depressing, just walking around in the rain all the time. It makes your immune system wack.”
Olive goes on to reflect on the cultural differences of touring in Europe,” This is our first tour in Europe, and we did not anticipate the amount of different kinds of transportation you'd have to take.
We have the bare minimum, the amount of underwear and outfits and shit for a month. And like, I don't even have my pedal board with me for my guitar. And it's still so many bags that we're like having to carry all over these trains and shit.”
Much to the band's gratitude, Wednesday provided backlines, which proved to be a godsend.
“That would have been impossible. We would not have been able to tour if we hadn't had the amps and everything. But yeah, I'm happy. We only have a couple of shows left before we go home.”
Olive ends on a more relatable note: “I'm trying to give all my energy out before we go back, then I’m not going to talk to anyone for a month. I'm very tired.”
Just before the colourless Winter, Olive had released her lo-fi debut album in September, “Everyone is a Light.” Under the artist name, Olivia O, this fuzzy, modest body of work is lovely. Whilst not being a stark contrast to her work with Lowertown, it hones in on the quiet, gentle style which makes their music so sweet to listen to.
“I have to be writing music all the time, because it's a good, healthy outlet for me. And “Everyone is a Light” is a collection of songs that I've been saving up from the past five years of my life. And it's just the best ones.
But the reason why it sounds so fuzzy is that I recorded all of it on my phone, in my bedroom, and produced it myself. So it's not very high-Fi. We recently went independent from our label. And that felt like a good opening of a new chapter for that project. Also, that's the reason why we put out this EP, because it represents the closing of the chapter with that label, and also a new era. Sort of like putting out the last good, solid songs we did during that time.”
Lowertown had recently left cult-ish, independent label Dirty Hit. Having signed to them at 18, Olive and Ashva sought more spontaneity. “We’ve been signed since we were 18, and now we're both 22.
And I feel as though we wanted some freedom to do what we wanted without worrying about - there's a lot of bureaucracy with a label. You have to go through a lot of people, and you have to wait a long time. And we also know how to do a lot of shit ourselves. We know how to put together a tour and release music. I think we just wanted a little bit of space to be spontaneous because we haven't felt like we've been able to be spontaneous with our music for a while.”
Ashva went on to say, “We've been organising, putting together everything ourselves with our drummer Joseph helping us book shows. We've kind of just been in a pretty tight circle. And we've been able to do it ourselves so far, which has been nice.”
Olive had recently affirmed her love of the irreverent British TV classic, Peep Show, in the Perfectly Imperfect newsletter. “We looove Peep Show,” they said in unison. “We found out about that when we first lived here and put out our first EP through the label, and that show, I’ve seen it through like 6 times.”
This led to a conversation about driving through the UK in Winter, and how I thought the roads of mainland Europe would be superior to the UK, but I was proved wrong. “When we entered Scottish territory, it changed dramatically. Like the rolling green hills, the kind of low clouds in the sky, and the blue skies were amazing. It completely brought our spirits up. We've been in the London area for so long. It's such a great breath of fresh air.”
Despite being taken aback by the lush scenery, Ashva and Olive elaborated on tougher times in the UK. Having lived on and off in London for a year, they found themselves caught up in the second UK lockdown. Ashva deplored, “It was tough - our experience living there. Because it was the dead of winter and COVID. And we were recording our record. So it was difficult to be creative. But it was fun. I've pretty much cherished those experiences, but I definitely think that it was tough.”
In total, I think we lived there on and off for like two months at a time. Just under a year. But we were there during like COVID, like wintertime. So it was like, intense ass fog. But we were there in the 2021/2022 Winter, and then we came back a lot. But yeah, it's made an impact on us.”
Since I spoke to Lowertown a couple of years ago, both Olive and Ashva have honed in on their solo projects. This year, Olive released her album, “No Bones, Sickly Sweet.” As well as an EP in collaboration with Child Star called “9.” Ashva has released two singles, 2024’s “Acid Mountain 65” and 2025’s “Rooster Salt.”