Album: Things We Lost In The Fire
Artist: Low
Born: Duluth, Minnesota
Released: January 2001
Genre: Slowcore
How to pick my favourite Low album? Few bands have been so consistently good in the recent decade or so. My entry point to their music was hearing Robert Plant's covers of Silver Rider and Monkey on his 2010 solo album, Band Of Joy. I suppose it's fitting that my introduction to Low's music should be via a cover, given how brilliant they are themselves at covering other people's music. I went to see the band play at Norwich Arts Centre in late 2013, where they not only played material from their most recent album (2013's Invisible Way) and Silver Rider and Monkey from 2005 LP, The Great Destroyer, but also covered Rihanna's Stay as an encore. It was magnificent. As much as any song, it underlines one of the band's real strengths; the melodic interplay of voices between Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk, the band's core duo and childhood sweethearts who are now man & wife. As well as the great vocal harmonies, Low have also built a reputation as pioneers of slowcore, a downbeat form of indie rock that started out in the 90s as a contrast to the energy and aggression of grunge. Low's sound evolved throughout the decade and this, their fifth album, is where I think the band really perfected their unique sound, adding new elements like the fuzzy bass guitar and electronic trickery, a process overseen by legendary recording engineer Steve Albini (who not only made his own brilliant music with Big Black, but also produced records by Nirvana, The Wedding Present, PJ Harvey, The Pixies, Palace Music, Mogwai and Joanna Newsom). Albini also produced Low's previous album, Secret Name (1999), which features the stunning song, Immune.
There aren't any good videos for songs from Low's Things We Lost In The Fire, so instead I posted above one of my favourite tracks from the latest album. Just Make It Stop sounds to me like a scream for respite from the information age, but musically it shares much with their work from a decade ago, especially the moments of almost Steve Reich-like minimalism. The most widely known song from this record is Dinosaur Act, which has fuzzy bass, Parker tapping a small snare drum and Sparhawk singing menacing, mysterious lyrics ("And putting your foot down / a nail shot up like a bright red snowflake"). 2001 was a particularly productive year for Low, also seeing the release of their EP, In The Fishtank 7, which features a brilliant cover of Neil Young's Down By The River. You can tell their love of Neil Young runs deep. Much of this album runs at a stately, sombre pace but with great songs like July, until there's a sudden uplift with Like A Forest, which contains a burst of strings and a much faster tempo, as well as cryptic, dark lyrics ("I wasted my breath / on words soon forgotten"), which sound like a prayer unanswered. The final song, In Metal, is another highlight on the record, as Parker and Sparhawk perform stunning vocal harmonies, on a song about their son, Hollis, and the feeling of wanting to preserve his youthful innocence forever ("Partly hate to see you grow / and just like your baby shoes / wish I could keep your little body / in metal"). This is a feeling many parents would recognise, but the metallic preservation idea is a little weird. Low continue to make great albums, C'Mon being one of my recent favourites, but to my mind, thus is the closest they came to perfection, both in terms of mood and musicianship.
How to pick my favourite Low album? Few bands have been so consistently good in the recent decade or so. My entry point to their music was hearing Robert Plant's covers of Silver Rider and Monkey on his 2010 solo album, Band Of Joy. I suppose it's fitting that my introduction to Low's music should be via a cover, given how brilliant they are themselves at covering other people's music. I went to see the band play at Norwich Arts Centre in late 2013, where they not only played material from their most recent album (2013's Invisible Way) and Silver Rider and Monkey from 2005 LP, The Great Destroyer, but also covered Rihanna's Stay as an encore. It was magnificent. As much as any song, it underlines one of the band's real strengths; the melodic interplay of voices between Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk, the band's core duo and childhood sweethearts who are now man & wife. As well as the great vocal harmonies, Low have also built a reputation as pioneers of slowcore, a downbeat form of indie rock that started out in the 90s as a contrast to the energy and aggression of grunge. Low's sound evolved throughout the decade and this, their fifth album, is where I think the band really perfected their unique sound, adding new elements like the fuzzy bass guitar and electronic trickery, a process overseen by legendary recording engineer Steve Albini (who not only made his own brilliant music with Big Black, but also produced records by Nirvana, The Wedding Present, PJ Harvey, The Pixies, Palace Music, Mogwai and Joanna Newsom). Albini also produced Low's previous album, Secret Name (1999), which features the stunning song, Immune.
There aren't any good videos for songs from Low's Things We Lost In The Fire, so instead I posted above one of my favourite tracks from the latest album. Just Make It Stop sounds to me like a scream for respite from the information age, but musically it shares much with their work from a decade ago, especially the moments of almost Steve Reich-like minimalism. The most widely known song from this record is Dinosaur Act, which has fuzzy bass, Parker tapping a small snare drum and Sparhawk singing menacing, mysterious lyrics ("And putting your foot down / a nail shot up like a bright red snowflake"). 2001 was a particularly productive year for Low, also seeing the release of their EP, In The Fishtank 7, which features a brilliant cover of Neil Young's Down By The River. You can tell their love of Neil Young runs deep. Much of this album runs at a stately, sombre pace but with great songs like July, until there's a sudden uplift with Like A Forest, which contains a burst of strings and a much faster tempo, as well as cryptic, dark lyrics ("I wasted my breath / on words soon forgotten"), which sound like a prayer unanswered. The final song, In Metal, is another highlight on the record, as Parker and Sparhawk perform stunning vocal harmonies, on a song about their son, Hollis, and the feeling of wanting to preserve his youthful innocence forever ("Partly hate to see you grow / and just like your baby shoes / wish I could keep your little body / in metal"). This is a feeling many parents would recognise, but the metallic preservation idea is a little weird. Low continue to make great albums, C'Mon being one of my recent favourites, but to my mind, thus is the closest they came to perfection, both in terms of mood and musicianship.
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