LOWLIVES - The "Freaking Out" interview 2024

We chat with Lee & Luke from Lowlives about their debut album, Freaking Out, how the band found their sound and the rollercoaster journey that led them to opening for The Used, playing Download Festival and recording a live session for BBC Radio 1.

LOWLIVES isn’t so much about carefully stoking the embers as pouring on gasoline with merry impetuosity. With vocalist Lee Downer and drummer Luke Johnson joined by guitarist Jaxon Moore and bassist Steve Lucarelli, the nascent band was founded on a shared love of ‘90s alternative and grunge, and a shared desire to make music once more for little more than the love of doing so.

“During my time away from music, someone bought a pair of child’s ear defenders for my wife and I as a present when we announced we were pregnant,” Johnson recalls. “I’d put them away in the cupboard, thinking we’d never need them, that I wouldn’t be playing any shows again. But they became this thing that nagged at me, the feeling that my daughter would never know the original me, for whom music was everything. Over time, those feelings came flooding back, as did the hunger, and the innocence. A massive part of me had been missing, and I wanted to get back to doing something pure and for the sheer love of it. That’s what Lowlives is. Whatever happens, happens. Let’s just Thelma And Louise this off a cliff.”

Recorded at Chapel Studios with producer Adrian Bushby, the 10 tracks that arrive under Freaking Out’s banner are the scintillating end product of their self-funded two-week stay, where the four musicians would work all day with joyous abandon on fleshing out the sketches of songs with which they arrived, before retiring at night to unwind over cans of cider and the football.

Downer points to his passion for Nirvana and Alice In Chains shining through on tracks such as ‘Vertigo’ and ‘Swan Dive’; Johnson likewise to his obsession with The Smashing Pumpkins on ‘You Don’t Care’. Fans of early-day Foo Fighters, Bush and Stone Temple Pilots will feel at home between Freaking Out’s sheets; admirers of Billie Joe Armstrong (‘Freaking Out’), Matt Skiba (‘Damien’) and Rivers Cuomo (‘Loser’), likewise. Freaking Out is an unashamed celebration of its influences, and the simple beauty of the coalescence of guitar, bass, drums and vocals.