Lowertown’s “Mice Protection” Marks a Hard Reset

Lowertown set “Mice Protection” as the opening track of Ugly Duckling Union, out this Friday via Summer Shade. It is the last single the duo offered before the full record lands, and its placement at the front is deliberate. This was the first song they wrote for the album, the one that clarified what the project would become.

Two years of touring and the disorientation of moving out of childhood homes in Atlanta had strained the partnership between Olivia O. and Avsha Weinberg. Returning to a basement studio was meant as a recalibration. The workspace came with a noticeable complication: a rat infestation in Weinberg’s house. The track’s title directly references that reality, a small, unglamorous detail that situates the recording in a specific, unruly place.

The song itself opens with an exhale, a gesture that aligns with the band’s description of a period spent reassessing their relationship to music. Lyrically, it introduces the album’s recurring concerns—shifting moral lines, the way reality bends across viewpoints, and the coexistence of harm and tenderness within a single person. Nothing here sounds overwrought. The tone stays direct, grounded in the mess and friction that prompted it.