Today, Ski Team, aka Lucie Lozinski, shares her new album Burnout/Boys. Teaming up with producer Philip Weinrobe (Adrianne Lenker, Westerman, Buck Meek, & many more) and Josh Bonati (Wild Nothing, Sufjan Stevens, Mac DeMarco) for mastering, Lozinski stakes her claim as a narratively ambitious and empathetically curious artist worthy of serious consideration. Shortly after the album’s release, she’ll partner with KCRW for a live show in LA January 30, and a NYC release show in February, more info below. With exacting tact, Ski Team tackles emotional responsibility, the strength and trust in one’s self it takes to start over, and the fear, failings, and forward motion of early adulthood.

Today’s focus track, “Gilroy” — written in the brutal, bleakly routine aftermath of a mass shooting at a California garlic festival — is a humming meditation on labor, class, loneliness, and escape; a fitting final focus for an album that so thoughtfully scans the current horizon. Burnout/Boys is able to internalize and personalize the topography from that scan while maintaining a cool, critical eye on it.

Listen to Burnout/Boys here.

“Gilroy” endeavors to shake the shoulders of those who are so desperate to escape the the ceaseless, lonely ladder-climbing of life and emphasize that everything is temporary, including rage and frustration. It’s an attempt at rationalization and human connection amid the hopelessness of a horizon-narrowing American future.

Ski Team explains: “‘Gilroy’ is about growing gaps between groups of Americans. I couldn’t figure out a pithy thesis statement [so] the choruses are deliberate moments of wordlessness—just to feel and sit with things, without declaring what the events mean or clamoring to get on the right side of something. I often have all the information I need. And I sort of understand. And I’m still confused and just need to take time to feel, to experience grief.”

Watch the lyric video for “Gilroy” here.
Throughout Burnout/Boys, you get a frequently surprising turn of events: “Santa,” which Atwood Magazine called, “a quietly devastating meditation on restraint, desire, and the strange mercy of being held back,” initially scans as a Sara Bareilles track but it quickly becomes clear that Lucie’s acrobatic melodies are paying tribute to a figure that’s more Billy Bob Thornton than Saint Nicholas: “he gives me a bump while we wait for the show / He’s the coolest guy I know.” Meanwhile “New BF,” is more in line with Splendora or Veruca Salt, while “Thirst Trap For Digeo” boasts a tube-y 70s disco sound, while album closer “Up The Wall” gives off a Westerman-like playfulness with sound. It’s a polychromatic yet consistent work.

A lot of Burnout/Boys is about the uncertainty surrounding the value of what’s created; a desire to be a human even while optimizing for efficiency and good experiences in both work and romance. The writing is what keeps Burnout/Boys whole: slight oddity and alluring precision.

Lucie Lozinski started making music as a young child, writing songs and learning to harmonize as she learned to talk and write, thanks to growing up surrounded by music at home, in her father’s backyard studio, and at church. She sang with some big names before turning 10, backing legends like Tony Bennett and Queen Latifah, and sang in bands as a teenager before turning her focus to writing — studying creative writing, literature, translation, and linguistics in school and winning awards for her early prose.

She moved to California to pursue a career in technical writing, learning about computers and technology from scratch. While there, she also compiled her first set of songs and started releasing them to the world as Ski Team, including not one, but two basketball-fueled tracks, “Knicks Suck,” and “Thank You, Jalen Brunson.”

Now back in New York, Lozinski has marked a new dedication to music. There’s nothing gushing about Ski Team’s writing, but the witty, incisive humor of it gets to the depth of it from another angle; she’s an expounder, and a bit of a comedian, but not a diarist. There’s a curious duality to her voice that mirrors this sentiment. Favoring nuance over resolve, occasional lyric ambiguity causes tension against scalpel-like precision of her vocal acuity. Taking a leave of absence form her career as an award-winning writer to make the forthcoming album, Ski Team set out to balance high agency with acceptance, observation, and making room for the unknown.