THE LOWER AETNA IS AN INDIE ROCK PROJECT FROM PHILADELPHIA.
The Lower Aetna began as a lonely dream in a quarantined apartment at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Sick with the then-novel Coronavirus and desperately in need of a new creative outlet after his previous project Honeyjar announced an indefinite hiatus, songwriter Dylan Gallimore found himself at the beginning of what turned out to be a lifelong journey.
That journey is The Lower Aetna, an ongoing, ever-evolving experiment in genre and storytelling.
Upon quietly launching The Lower Aetna alone in his apartment and wrapped in an afghan knitted by his mom, Gallimore immediately enlisted the help of singer Kayla Rae Molocznik, his Honeyjar bandmate and childhood best friend. Naming the project after the South Jersey lake where he spent much of his childhood, Gallimore created The Lower Aetna to be a permanent place for retreat, escape, and shameless, uninhibited creative exploration.
The band’s 2022 debut, Waiting For God To Turn On The Lights, is a stadium rock concept album that examines the threat that online conspiracies pose to families. With songs written from the perspectives of multiple members of a fictional suburban family, Waiting For God To Turn On The Lights investigates what can happen to a family when one their loved ones gets sucked into the dangerous and deranged world of online conspiracies.
On The Lower Aetna’s follow-up, 2024’s Pine, Gallimore draws inspiration from his experiences as a queer man, as well as his youth in South Jersey’s sprawling Pine Barrens. Pine follows a cast of queer characters living quiet lives in the archipelago of small towns that speckle the Pine Barrens, all desperate for something—lost love, a human touch, a memory of better days, or even just a flicker of hope that things might be better tomorrow.
Pine finds The Lower Aetna balancing folk and alt country influences with classic rock instincts. The record features contributions from members of Modern Baseball, Steady Hands, Darla, and Honeyjar, plus Philadelphia pedal steel legend Mike “Slo Mo” Brenner.
For The Lower Aetna, what once started as a desperate dream for escape has blossomed into a full-fledged, ever-evolving, life-long creative project, with each record representing a standalone chapter in a longer, ever-unfolding book about the complexities of the human condition and the shadows within us all.
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Podcast: The Lower Aetna
on 25 O'CLOCK
on 25 O'CLOCK
Fresh off a packed album release show at Philadelphia's legendary World Cafe Life, The Lower Aetna's frontman Dylan Gallimore sat down with Dan Drago, the host of 25 O'Clock, for a talk that covered everything from songwriting and shreddy guitar playing to growning up closeted and finding meaningful expression creating fiction.
Click below to take a listen.
Interview: The Lower Aetna in RAINBOW RODEO
A few weeks before releasing Pine, The Lower Aetna's songwriter and frontman Dylan Gallimore talked to queer county zine Rainbow Rodeo. Their conversation covers songwriting, tattoos, queerness, the Pine Barrens, and Craig Finn, all of which constitutes roughly 60% of Dylan's entire personality.
Click here to read the interview.
Podcast: The Lower Aetna
on LITTLE KNOWN TRACKS
on LITTLE KNOWN TRACKS
While mired in the highs and lows of producing The Lower Aetna's second record, Dylan Gallimore Little Known Tracks to talk songwriting, storytelling, filmmaking, queer millennial loneliness, and (of course) Lord of the Rings fan fiction.
Click here to listen now.
Podast: The Lower Aetna
on LEFT OF THE DIAL
on LEFT OF THE DIAL
The Lower Aetna lead singer and songwriter Dylan Gallimore joined host Andrea Quinn for a wide-ranging discussion that touched on everything from shlocky lyrics to dadly poetics to ABC's Lost. (And, of course, The Lower Aetna's debut record Waiting for God to Turn on the Lights.)
Click here to listen now.
THE LOWER AETNA NAMED 2022 "BEST OF JERSEY"
The folks at Left of the Dial named Waiting for God to Turn on the Lights as one of their favorite releases from an NJ-connected band in 2022, alongside records from L.S. Dunes, Senses Fail, Armor for Sleep, and others.
PINE - the new record, streaming everywhere August 9, 2024
What happens to the people we grow up with, but don’t think about anymore? As we age and go our own ways in life, what secrets do we silently start to carry, without even realizing it? How do they weigh us down? What regrets do we eventually accept that we’ll have to learn to live with?
As the clock ticks down and the years flash by, how do we grapple with the choices that we’ve made? Choices, that, for better or worse, have carried us to where we are?
These are the kinds of questions that The Lower Aetna investigate on their second full-length record Pine, a country-twinged collection of ten character-driven songs about love, lust, desperation, and regret.
On Pine, Lower Aetna frontman and songwriter Dylan Gallimore draws inspiration from his experiences as a queer man and his youth in South Jersey’s sprawling Pine Barrens. Pine follows a cast of queer characters living quiet lives in the archipelago of small towns that speckle the Pines, all desperate for something—lost love, a human touch, a memory of better days, or even just a flicker of hope that things might be better tomorrow.
Breaking new sonic ground after their 2022 debut, the stadium rock concept album Waiting For God To Turn On The Lights, Pine finds The Lower Aetna balancing folk and alt country influences with classic rock instincts. Pine features contributions from members of Modern Baseball, Steady Hands, Darla, and Honeyjar, plus Philadelphia pedal steel legend Mike “Slo Mo” Brenner.
As we grow up and get older, we all cut our own deals with the world we’re born into. Pine is a record about the deals we take, the consequences we suffer, and what we must live without as a result.
Pine is produced by Gallimore and Richard Straub (Steady Hands, Darla), mixed by Brendan Monahan, and mastered by Ian Farmer and his cat, Onion, at the Metal Shop.
Waiting For God To Turn On the lights
The debut record - now streaming on all major platformsA concept album characterized by rotating narrator points of view, Waiting for God to Turn on the Lights tells the story a fictional American family whose mother absconds reality in favor of the dopamine-driven temptations of a digital fantasy world—namely, the deranged Qanon conspiracy theory.
As their mother descends further and further down the rabbit hole, the songs, which are written from different fictional family members' perspectives, trace the psychological and emotional toll her journey exacts from those who love her most.
Click here to listen to the full album.
I BELIEVE TOO MUCH
INSIDE THE WORLD OF WAITING FOR GOD TO TURN ON THE LIGHTS
Download the free companion lyric booklet
Photo by Jeff Familetti
Photo by Jeff Familetti