Support our next album
An artist's career is built upon the ongoing support of people like you. Lowland Hum is no exception.
So, with our next album Glyphonic underway, we are asking you, our fans and friends, to help us bring it across the finish line so that it can be enjoyed by you, it’s intended recipients.
Watch our Kickstarter video & check out a curated collection of Lowland Hum swag here.
PopMatters Premieres "salzburg Summer"
about lowland hum
Lowland Hum is wife and husband team Lauren and Daniel Goans. Together they invite their listeners to share in the space of vulnerable intimacy they have formed over years of steady collaboration. In the live setting, the duo offers an immersive experience of thoughtful songcraft interspersed with audience interaction and extemporaneous songs about the day's happenings. Their recordings take listeners on a journey through relatable, imagistic poetry exploring themes of memory, longing, confession and identity, and drawing attention to often unnoticed resonances of the everyday.
Daniel and Lauren are a prolific, two-person creative factory basing their operation in Charlottesville, Virginia. They write, arrange and produce all of their own music, and have honed a cohesive design aesthetic to match the hushed simplicity of their sound.
The duo's beginning starts with Daniel, a songwriter, performer and producer from North Carolina. Daniel and Lauren’s creative worlds first collided one hot, Greensboro summer in 2010 when Daniel asked Lauren to design the album art for a solo record he was working on. Having once heard Lauren singing to herself at a party, he eventually coaxed her into singing some harmonies on that same album. This was Lauren's first experience with recording. Previously, her performance experience consisted of her middle and high school chorus classes, which, in her own words, provided her with a strong connection to melody and harmony in a context that was well-suited to her shy disposition.
Initially, Lauren performed with Daniel, singing harmonies on songs he had written, but within a year or so, the two began cowriting and arranging virtually all of the material together. Lowland Hum formed officially in 2012, a few months after the two were married and their collaboration deepened. In the years following the release of their critically acclaimed debut Native Air (2013), the duo has tirelessly toured the country, spending more time on the road than at home. In 2014 they followed up their debut with Four Sisters, a conceptual EP and video series, and then, in 2015, they released their eponymous sophomore full-length album, garnering a slew of praise, including an NPR First Listen. Lowland Hum has performed in diverse settings all over the country ranging from folk festivals, art museums and theaters to living rooms and gardens. During their time off the road, Daniel produces albums for other bands.
Lauren's background in visual art asserts itself in the duo's collaboration significantly. She has created all of the band's artwork and design as well as several transportable installation pieces that served as additions to the band’s live performances. She is also responsible for an impressive collection of music videos often using found footage from public domain archives. Over the years, Lauren has designed five editions of handmade lyric books that the duo passes out to audiences so they can read along and interact more deeply with the lyrical content of their songs if they so choose.
Lowland Hum's songs have been described as poetic and evocative, and their arrangements minimal, hushed and dynamic. They continue to attract a growing body of listeners around the world. Daniel and Lauren spent the summer of 2016 creating their third full-length album in a friend's attic. The album, Thin, came out on February 10, 2017, and is their "deepest collaboration to date" according to the band. They completed a nationwide headline tour, sharing the stage with the likes of Josh Ritter, Jesca Hoop and Penny and Sparrow along the way. After playing a handful of festivals last summer, the band embarked on a nationwide tour supporting Penny and Sparrow followed directly by a five week European tour.
In the first months of 2018, Lowland Hum toured the US supporting The Oh Hellos and released a compilation EP of recordings from the first two years of the bands existence. Between tours in the summer and fall, the band will complete the recording of their fifth full length LP, to be released in early 2019.
Serena Jae
Mod Club, Toronto - by Mike Harris
The Current, Minneapolis, MN
Columbus, OH - by Ron Valle
by Eric Kelley
"Sincerity, community and beauty is how I think of Lowland Hum; the sounds of Lauren and Daniel Goans. Thin is the husband and wife duo's third album since their 2013 debut, further refining their hushed harmonies and aural paintings. It's a sound that makes them a quiet Sunday-morning favorite." - Bob Boilen, NPR Music
"[On Thin]...the two of them, their voices, their emotions (it’s hard not to detect them), became the spotlight, the tension, and the spark of this album. It’s like watching negative space become the feature, then back again. It is quietly, emotionally, psychedelic. A kind of game of listening. When do they braid together into one voice? Where do they pull apart? They can make harmonies as gentle as mist, and they do, time and time again, all up and down the tracks of this record. But there are also moments of one voice calling out to the other, unanswered. What you are listening to, you realize, is the undulating form, of strain." - Lulu Miller
"[Lowland Hum creates an] atmospheric brand of emotionally intelligent folk..." - Matt Grosinger, Nerdist
"For many, the art-folk duo first graced our ears when they took part in NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series a couple of years back. Since then, they’ve been steadily growing a faithful following and riding the wave of popularity rise alongside a movement for conscious music that forgoes the showboat-y anthems of stadium bands in favor of thoughtful, haunting folk movements to sit back and really listen to and relate to." - Jonathan Frahm, For Folk's Sake
"In this frantic, fast food, Facebook world, Lowland Hum draws us into a sanctuary where we can really feel, and dare to be human, with all the naked vulnerability that implies. Thin is majestic in its simplicity, elegant in its honesty." - Joe McSpadden, No Depression
"Husband-wife duo Daniel and Lauren Goans have crafted one of the most inventive and fittingly humble holiday collections this season. They’ve re-imagined such warhorses as “Joy to the World” and “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” to give them unexpected freshness and supplement them with less-frequently covered tunes including the African American spiritual “Ain’t That Rockin’ All Night” and Johnny Cash’s “We Are the Shepherds.” A smart blend of low-tech and high-imagination." - Randy Lewis, LA Times