Chicago's Twin Peaks lit up their initial recordings by channeling the glowing residue of 1960s garage rock together with the searing intensity of 2010s garage punk, a combination that defined their proper studio debut and second album overall, Wild Onion from 2014. While filling rock venues to capacity and building a name for delivering high-energy performances, the group shifted toward a more introspective approach on 2016's Down in Heaven, which drew from later British Invasion sources. Remaining freewheeling and dynamic onstage, the band ventured into 1970s roots rock and jam-band territory by the time Lookout Low appeared in 2019.
Four Chicago natives who had been close since grade school—vocalist/guitarist Cadien Lake James, guitarist Clay Frankel, bassist Jack Dolan, and drummer Connor Brodner—established Twin Peaks in the early 2010s. After the project James shared with his brother Hal ended so Hal could join the Smith Westerns, the four friends assembled a band near the close of high school and launched into touring while still seniors. They cut a quick, low-cost album in James' basement beforehand, intending to fund gas and beer on the road; that recording, titled Sunken, reached Autumn Tone, which released it during summer 2013. Following graduation, James, Dolan, and Brodner enrolled at Evergreen College in Olympia, yet soon abandoned academics, collected Frankel in Los Angeles, and returned to Chicago.
Back home, they crafted a follow-up album alongside producers Andrew Humphrey and Colin Croom. The sessions allowed greater refinement without sacrificing the spontaneous vitality of their concerts, confirming that leaving school to remain together had been the right call. Grand Jury put out Wild Onion in summer 2014, shortly after the quartet impressed audiences at the Pitchfork Festival; additional festival appearances, among them Lollapalooza, came amid nonstop touring that crossed the United States repeatedly and extended into Canada, Mexico, the U.K., and Western Europe ahead of their third album, Down in Heaven, in spring 2016. With Croom added on keyboards, that release preserved the group's raw character while reflecting the contemplative spirit of favored late-1960s works by the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, and the Beatles. The next year brought the double-live set Urbs in Horto, captured across three nights at Chicago's Metro and Thalia Hall in 2016. Over the subsequent twelve months the band kept touring and issued several 7" singles, later gathered as Sweet '17 Singles in 2018. That same year Frankel and his then-roommate Chris Bailoni issued an album under the name Grapetooth that merged garage punk with new wave elements.
Twin Peaks reconvened in the studio with producer Ethan Johns, whose prior credits include Paul McCartney, Kings of Leon, and Ray LaMontagne. Guests included Ohmme on backing vocals and Kyle Davis on auxiliary percussion. Lookout Low emerged in 2019.
