Low: Classic or classic?

i watched that low documentary on cable last nite. maaaaaaaan, was that boring. not even two members of napalm death could pep things up. HOW IRONIC LOW DUDE THEY ARE IN NAPALM DEATH AND YOU ARE IN LOW AND YOU ARE IN THE SAME BUILDING WHAT ARE THE ODDS. on the other hand, it made me want to listen to low records. i do like low. and watching low live from my couch is, if you ask me, the best friggin' place on earth to watch low live.

hahah, interesting post. a boring documentary that made you wanna listen to the records. i can see that. good documentary i guess, rather slow, i own it but have only watched it once, so far.

the live footage is indeed superb.

that's the Low In Europe thing, right? I've got that DVD too, should really watch it again too

they should have set up the most boring people alive premise even more than they did. they sould have called the doc: HOW LOW CAN YOU GO:THE DIRTY DULUTH 3 LAY WASTE TO EUROPE! with girls gone wild cover art.

Maybe the sequel will be even lower

Low & Lowerer, with new bass player Jim Carrey

ultimately characterless and forgettable

lol. Heard Drums and Guns?

it hadn't been released back then

i have "low in europe" and only got halfway through it. hmm. and as you all know, i adore them.

vvv tickled to see the original post -- it was alex who got me into low, some ... fucking hell, 12 years ago now. christ.

which album do I listen to right now if I've never heard any of them before? quick!

I think The Great Destroyer is very accessible, so that may be a good entry point. But I guess Things We Lost In The Fire might be a more representative disc.

A handful of songs on the new disc (called Drums and Guns) are also an excellent introduction to the band. Try, for example, this killer (no pun intended) version of Murderer, from a live, in-studio performance last year.

Things We Lost in the Fire is a great introduction. I'd also recommend Secret Name, which was my intro, also very good.

Things We Lost in the Fire, definitely. Worked for me at least, from the first chord change.

Anyone see that film about Low that's now showing on Pitchfork.tv? It's called You Might Need A Murderer. I didn't know how troubled Alan Spearhawk was. Semi-boring film, but a totally compelling band.

Oh it's on Pitchfork.tv? Sweet, I saw it in the local record store today and passed on it ($20 brand new) but i'll totally watch it for free. One of my all time favorite bands, love these guys.

npr interview with the sparhawks a while ago that touched on his issues

Catch it now, Stephen. It's the "One Week Only" feature on Pitchfork.tv.

That NPR interview is fascinating. Sparhawk dances around his problems some, but this is the first time I've heard he was suicidal.

Thanks Daniel, I'll be sure to check it out Sunday morning when i get up :D

Retribution Gospel Choir (Alan's new, catchier, LOUD, rock band) played a sparsely attended show in Montreal on Friday that was fucking amazing. PLayed their hearts out for we seated folk, left my ears so happily ringing. Was sad to see him loading up the van alone in the street afterward (last time I saw Low it was at ATP with another 1000 people). If Retribution Gospel Choir come to chez toi, go go go. terrific.

Low have subtley crept, over the course of about ten years, into the position of being my favorite existing band.

"subtly"

Some good discussion on this thread, methinks.

Retribution Gospel Choir (Alan's new, catchier, LOUD, rock band) played a sparsely attended show in Montreal on Friday that was fucking amazing.

ARGH I was on the list for this but couldn't go, damn you, job.

I've seen them 7-8 times since 1997 and have observed as the venue/audience size has grown in tandem with the expanse of the band's dynamic (louder choruses, distortion pedals and such). The songs from their last few records are perfectly suited to the mid-size theatres they play these days. But my favorite gigs were one in the mid-to-late 90's, when they would come through the Ann Arbor/Detroit area quite regularly and play at little hole-in-the-wall spots: The (small) audience would generally sit on the floor and remain dead silent until the band finished playing (save for the occasional applause). There was a communal reverence, churchlike almost, unlike anything else I've experienced at rock gigs (even a "seated" Yo La Tengo show from their And Then Nothing.. tour, in which the band/venue provided the audience with folding chairs, didn't come close). It was a beautiful thing to be a part of, really.

I totally get that. I'm sure you'd agree, though, that they deserve all the additional attention -- and higher audience attendance at shows -- that they now get. I'm with you: Low has become one of my favorite, if not my absolute favorite, band of the moment.

I'll third that. Best band going today.

i saw RGC a few years back with Kozelek and they were alright but the drummer was really stiff; if it's the same guy I'm sure they've loosened up a bit. I'm assuming Kozelek isn't on this tour.

the best thing they played though was a crazy ass cover of "the carpet crawlers"

I'm sure you'd agree, though, that they deserve all the additional attention -- and higher audience attendance at shows

Yeah, it has actually been very rewarding to watch a humble little band like Low build and expand their aesthetic over the years, and at the same time gain popularity because of the sheer quality of their art. Even thought I have those fond memories of tiny quiet shows, I have no problem sharing Low with The World.

Strictly in terms of popularity, though, I know Low is bigger in Europe than The States, at least circa early-2000s. Was it that way in the mid-to-late 90's too? I'd been used to Low concerts being generally as described above. But then, in 2000, I moved to Dublin for college and twice saw Low in sold-out concerts at The Olympia, a fairly large theatre (fantastic shows both, one with cello!).

"thought" = though

stop all the clocks, quieten all the whisperings about low's republican tendencies:

low are playing an obama benefit somewhere.

they're also doing christmas shows in the uk, in november.

I had only heard about teh one show. Is it definitely shows plural?

yeh, manchester ('uni' i think, which i guess is hop & grape/academy three?) and oran mor glasgow. there's a churchy bit to oran mor, although i guess it's more likely they'll be downstairs.

I'm going to the London one - it's at Koko.

So I've just heard something bizarre about how Alan S. threw a guitar at his audience at a Saturday show in the UK?

Drowned in Sound thread with details:

http://drownedinsound.com/articles/4020122

^^ shit's wack

and yeah, classic. particularly the very early stuff, which stylistically i prefer a whole lot to the recent stuff, which tends to be a little too comfortable and prosaic for my liking

Buncha fuckin Helen Lovejoys on that DiS thread non-shocker

this is all very sad. that's not the first thing i've read about onstage trouble in the last few months, either.

weird. I know alan was talking publicly about going on medication a couple of years ago so my assumption would be that it has something to do with that.

but it is a bit funny to think you'd get HURT at a low show

Buncha fuckin Helen Lovejoys on that DiS thread non-shocker

it was a seriously dangerous and fucking stupid thing to do. also, that festival was awash with kids. sparhawk is very lucky that he isn't facing manslaughter charges, and i am not being remotely hysterical here.

i mean, i was there, and the whole thing was *horrific, actually properly upsetting. sorry that the DiS readers aren't chuckling it off with sub-Chunklet ironic machismo, dude.

I primarily meant the hectoring pseudo-concern for the mental problems of someone they've never met, and directives of what he should and shouldn't do with his life. I know people care about the band (as do I) and the guy's problems sound horrible, but it rubbed me up the wrong way is all

no worries dude, i was totally over-vociferous up there. apols.

Would anyone out there be willing to ysi me a copy of "Prisoner"? It's on the Lifetime of Temporary Relief box set (also originally appeared in the limited Finally... EP). I'm desperate to find it but the songs from the box set aren't available on emusic, amazon, or itunes. I'd be very grateful...

unless someone beats me to it i'll up it later on today for you

i don’t think HW is (excepting Days Lkke These) , but i think of DN as their most political album.

It hadn't occurred to me that either of the last two albums might be especially political by Low's standards. DN in particular has their most minimalist lyrics (maybe "Disarray" aside) since the first few albums, and in many senses its relationship to the wider world feels as political to me as their music (lyrically and otherwise) always has. When in "Disarray" they sing "This evil spirit, man, it's bringing me down / It tells me not to do the things that I should / It graduated to the back of the bus / They say you let it in when you took the drugs", it feels to me of a piece with the line in "Same", "I'm tired of waking up with the same clothes and the same holes in my skin".

If there is a thematic throughline to the last three albums for me, it is about the limitations of communication and understanding, largely narrativized on "Ones and Sixes" (so many of the songs are about the singer(s) looking to another, or being looked to by another, for answers, when none are there), then literalized at the level of the music itself on Double Negative, before achieving a kind of synthesis or mediation between those two approaches on Hey What.

I think often when their lyrics sounds most tossed-off in their later work there is something very deliberate going on.

When it opens with "When they found you on the edge of the road, you had a pistol underneath your coat...", "Lies" sounds like it's going to be a return to the archetypal solemn middle-period Low epic (both Things We Lost... and Trust begin with the retrieval of a dead body), before immediately jumping away to "But it all started back in '79...", and then breaking its own storytelling fourth wall: "--Why don't you tell me what you really want, instead of making up the same old lies, lies, lies?" Those jump cuts which might signal a kind of storytelling impatience to some (though Low's songs were always filled with jump cuts like that - "Violence" would seem ridiculous if it wasn't intoned with the slowness and inevitability of a glacier), but to me it's storytelling about impatience, about Alan wrestling with the fact that he suspects he can only approach his subject matter obliquely, that the kind of hermetically sealed narrative plenitude of a "Sunflowers" or "(That's How You Sing) Amazing Grace" might be just as distortive in its pristine perfection.

(none of which is intended to give Low's lyrics a kind of general-purpose free pass - whatever they may have been trying to do with the ending of "Witches", I still can't appreciate it)

That’s interesting, because for me “Lies” is a great song, but I get a different feeling from the lyrical content— to me it feels a bit like pastiche, which isn’t a bad tactic lyrically, but where you hear storytelling about impatience, I hear Alan cribbing lines from pop and rock music of the past 50 years, which simply doesn’t affect me emotionally as much as what you term the hermetically sealed songs or moments.

This isn’t to say that I don’t appreciate referentiality— it’s all over his lyrics. The Marvin Gaye line in “In the Drugs” makes me smile every time, but it also serves the general throughline of the song, whereas storytelling about impatience and obliquity simply isn’t as interesting, and feels less unified at that. I understand that some might appreciate that quality, and I do to a certain degree, but I like songs like “Lies” almost in spite of their lyrics rather than because of them, whereas with earlier albums I simply love the whole thing.

Something that I was going to say here but which it turned out I already said on the pre-poll thread several years ago is how I hear a secret connection between The Great Destroyer and Hey What:

I was interested to go back to Double Negative after not listening to it for a while. I was wondering if its experiments would feel at once self-conscious and redundant after Hey What anchored the same overall sound within generally more coherent songs. But no, its bruised quality is still so powerful. Listening to it I switched to thinking "maybe Hey What will now sound lesser when I put it on". Of course I then tried that, and it really brought out the satisfying immediacy and present-ness of the sound on Hey What, which I now somewhat associate with The Great Destroyer.

― Tim F, Monday, 8 November 2021 11:18 (four years ago)

Like, the band who just made "More" is definitely the band who made "Everybody's Song".

― Tim F, Monday, 8 November 2021 11:20 (four years ago)

the best part of the Burton-produced run is how obvious it is Mimi is the MVP. listening to "what part of me" is a fantastic example of a lead Alan number but Mimi completely tops it.

i remember reading the p4k review during the initial publication and this one section was what completely reorganized how i listened to the output of any artist/director/etc.

I doubt Low fans who've held on this long will rebel against these new textures, more the way they're employed-- the band has added an almost disconcerting levity, and subtracted the gentleness. The less said about the jaunty funk bass and busier loops of "Always Fade" and "Hatchet" the better; the latter is at least a mid-record palette-cleanser. It's this mode of Low that's the hardest to get used to; they sounding less sparse and more glib and underdeveloped, lost in uncharted territory. Parker, thankfully more present here than on recent records, gets "Dust on the Window" to herself, and its dusky balladry is a high point in a difficult middle section. Sequencing does threaten to kill this record, though there's ropes to old fans and frustrated listeners later in the album. "Take Your Time" is a dip into the pathos of previous Low records, even using church bells to further dampen the dirge. Should this not be enough for alienated fans, try to take comfort in the seven other albums that came before. There's a point at which a consistent sound is no longer a virtue. "Your Poison" shows us what Low would sound like as Guided By Voices; we don't need it. Once you're approaching double digits in album output, your records should actually do something to change status quo and justify their release, or at the very least spark some shred of interest in new listeners with the band's back catalog.

try to take comfort in the seven other albums that came before

That’s what I continue to do— and over the past week, I’ve listened to the newer records, and honestly still don’t like them anywhere near as much as the older records. There’s a reason I don’t think about them or go back to them much.

Now what interests me is that I rather liked songs from these records when performed live— but the records themselves leave me feeling cold.

It's interesting how we all have different reactions to the same band. I go back to 'I Could Live In Hope', 'Secret Name', 'Things We Lost In The Fire' & 'Ones and Sixes' all the time. I love all their periods and listen widely across them but those albums are my comfort zone. I've said before on here that I'm not the biggest fan of 'The Invisible Way' but that's mostly because 'Plastic Cup' is the one Low song where I cannot stand the lyrics. There are moments of sublime beauty and connection across their entire discography for me and that's why they're my favourite band. They were also astonishing live and I was lucky enough to see them six times over the years and I cherish those memories

They're just a great band whose catalog is degrees of good to great, and all worthwhile. No whammies.

i agree, i just never *want* to listen to anything after Trust, if i am being honest. i have to make an effort, or a song has to come on shuffle.

Didn't know until weeks ago that the last albums had been polarizing. I think "Always Trying to Work It Out" and "Hey" are some of their very best songs.

I think all of their albums have some of their very best songs. not sure about the tweedy album, I was forget about that one, but I assume it does, too.

“Always Trying to Work it Out” might be my least favorite Low song of all time lol

My god, Low fans are so different. Not quite Scott Walker levels of disagreeing fans but it does seem unusual.

I was a die-hard fan from the first album (bought solely based on the album cover in 1994). Bought every 7”, searched out every compilation appearance all the way through TWLITF, which was the first time I felt like there were no new ideas lurking in the record. Even though I really liked it, it’s when I felt myself starting to move on from Low. When Trust came out I actually didn’t even buy it. Then when Great Destroyer came out I really didn’t like the direction they were moving in. I was put off by early tracks from Drums & Guns too (Monkey and Breaker, two songs which to this day I still don’t like.)

So basically that was about 7 years of hardcore fandom followed by nearly 10 years of tangential interest at best, even though I still adored the early albums. At some point I decided to do a deep re-listen and finally after a loooong time, Things We Lost suddenly opened up for me and became my favorite of theirs, and I got back on board with everything they’d go on to do.

I also reconnected with the next three albums (and I think Murderer is arguably the best song they ever did), but overall those are still the three I feel least affinity for. They each have incredible highs but they also contain songs that are among my least favorites.

By “the next three” I mean Trust, GD, and D&G

Kinda surprised people draw a line in their newer records. Their songwriting style hasn’t changed much since around TWLITF. They started doing producer roulette amongst heavy hands (Albini, Fridmann, Burton, etc.) to mix things up, but the songwriting has felt pretty stable (and been consistently good).

If there’s a distinction between early vs. new, I would think it would be the Vernon Yard years vs. everything after. The Vernon Yard albums were beholden to the (intentionally limiting) sound. Secret Name and moreso TWLITF was when the songwriting started coming into focus, and it’s been like that ever since.

If I was to draw a line anywhere it would probably be based on the drop in Alan's register, which occurred progressively over the first four albums but felt locked in from TWLITF onwards.

There’s also a narrative that C’mon through Ones and Sixes was a low point for the band, and the final two albums marked a comeback of sorts. Maybe in terms of critical attention this is true–-and those albums aren't the most exciting (although I don’t see why people seem particularly down on The Invisible Way)–-but it seems like that period was when the band’s reputation as indie stalwarts was solidifying. Each show seemed to draw bigger and more respectful crowds than the last, set lists looked more and more like greatest hits sets, and Alan especially seemed happier and more comfortable.

The band’s full of contradictions in a fun way. Like The Great Destroyer is one of their weakest imo, but the band seems to like it, or they always draw heavily from it in their shows.

I think in 2011 they also did those 10 yr anniversary shows where they played TWLITF in full? That was when I realised they were now a “legacy” band (also I wish I had gone).

that period was a relatively unadventurous one for them after they'd spent a few albums shaking things up, and the invisible way is probably their weakest (though it's by no means bad) so i can see why people would think that way. ones and sixes does completely lead into double negative & hey what though

Apropos of nothing in particular, "Death of a Salesman" is a grim & beautiful song.

Listening to a lot of the two post-Low Sparhawks lately, but also "Secret Room" and "The Great Destroyer" (I'm with Robert Plant here) and "C'mon" lately. Totally incredible stuff.

Never heard this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lchC5sQepqE

It and their cover of “Blue Eyed Devil” are their best covers

i love the "down by the river" they did with dirty three

“Let Jah Be Praised” is their one reggae track and it makes me so happy.

i love the "down by the river" they did with dirty three

― ufo, Tuesday, June 9, 2026 4:21 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Oh yeah, these three would probably be my top three Low covers on a given day.

Their covers of "Little Surfer Girl" and Tom T. Hall's "I Love" are also wonderful.

Oh fuck, of course there' "I Started a Joke," too, which is incredible.

The "I Love" cover is, afaic, the defining version of the song— even when Zak takes over from Mimi for the one verse re: drugs, it's just sublime.

For a band with a beautiful & unique catalog of originals, they are also sublime as a covers band.

When we voted 5 years ago the ILX hive mind said these were the best covers

1. Down by the River - 186 points, 12 voters, 5 #1 votes
2. Transmission - 156 points, 11 voters, 4 #1 votes
3. Fearless - 154 points, 12 voters, 1 #1 vote
4. I Started a Joke - 140 points, 9 voters, 2 #1 votes
5. Little Drummer Boy - 112 points, 8 voters, 1 #1 vote
6. Blue-Eyed Devil - 108 points, 8 voters, 2 #1 votes
7. Long Long Long - 96 points, 8 voters
8. Stay - 92 points, 8 voters
8. Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me - 92 points, 7 voters, 1 #1 vote
10. Lord, Can You Hear Me? - 90 points, 9 voters

Nice bit from an Invisible Way-era interview with Alan:

A little bit of experience gives you some confidence sometimes. In those times when you're questioning your abilities sometimes you're able to remember that, "Oh yeah, it takes work and doesn't always feel right at first." Or, "Be patient." If it feels like nothing is working, eventually it will and that's kind of all you really learn with time. A little bit of patience with your own process. Being able to trust that if you keep at it, it will show its face.

don't forget their cover of Africa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWPx5N3rCvU

I guess since there was never an "official" recording of it, I never considered the Africa cover, but I do remember it!!

One thing I thought at the time, and was reminded of watching it just now, is that I think Low could have absolutely *slaughtered* a cover of "Little Red Corvette."

What about “Thieves In the Temple?”

It’s not my favorite Prince song but I they could have worked some magic with it.

oh totally, but “Little Red Corvette” was one of the songs they could have chosen for that AV club feature