Do You Know How to POLLtz?: ILM Artist Poll #111 - Low

did we talk about Robert Plant's cover of Silver Rider? it's ok but not a patch on the Low version. Really misses Mimi's high notes on the la-la-la in the chorus.

he seems to be a huge fan of the great destroyer, he's convered quite a few tracks off it

Now hearing it again after the two recent albums I can see where it was coming from and it sounds subtle and really good. The individual songs don’t necessarily stand out (except Landslide) and it is lighter than those, but in retrospect it is mysterious and self-effacing and is unlike anything else they’ve done

― Dan S, Monday, November 15, 2021 1:12 AM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

The songs are lighter but intense and captivating and the sound is fuller, so it feels like an emancipation, a balance. The electronic touches add a lot of cold-warm atmosphere, you can imagine landscapes and snow storms, which work excellently as a backdrop to the vulnerability. There is no song that approaches a "definitive Low statement", but each song is both intimate and expansive, and together they feel very comfortable, easy and natural. My #1 is from the album and I have neither Landslide nor What part of me on my ballot and I even reluctantly had to let go of DJ. I don't know if it's their best, but I find it's the album where all the different facets of their sound came together.

Another thing that poll has brought home is what an incredible voice / vocalist Alan is.

yes it's been extended for a week, plenty of time still

Thank you, ufo! You have one ballot that wouldn't have made it with the original deadline incoming, at least.

Really wish we'd gone with 50. I'm at 35 right now. Impossible choices.

Album and covers all done, but tracks are just impossible.

Did we not do 50? Because I did 50.

considering including no tracks from the Low album I’m putting at #1, there are too many songs to whittle down already

could vote for 50 easily

the main count is just going to take ballots of 30 tracks max

i'll tally up a version including the few extended ballots i have received as well, since they're there, but it's not going to be the main results or anything

Is it possible Low is just a band that is too consistently good for so long and (contrary to general assumption) too diverse in sound for a consensus to form?

That would be an interesting result... But I'd guess there will be one, and my tracks reflecting a preference for their darker, stranger, more textural work will probably not make a showing.

I feel like their prettier and rockier sides will probably win out?

some of their prettier songs are also dark and strange though. In their middle albums there are a lot of reference points to drug addiction and overcoming it - Trust definitely but also The Great Destroyer and Ones and Sixes

“When I go deaf” seems like it would be a devastating topic for a musician to write about. Alan says he won’t mind but the music says otherwise.

If I'm not a lion
And I'm not an island
If time is the diamond

Well all right

i'm not sure if the poll was extended, but i'm going to submit tonight regardless. i'm going with 30, even if 50 is better. fewer is better, more hard decisions. poll of one! poll of one! (i don't believe that. no wrong way to vote in this poll, imo)

yes, it was extended until sunday

you can't let me know that! i work on a deadline-motivation scheme!

*fades away in low motion*

i am having a really hard isolating songs from Double Negative and HEY WHAT. i'm doing it, anyway, but it's taken me so much longer to pick a few songs from them, compared to what it was like to listen through all the others leading up to it.

"poor sucker", for example.

what a beautiful piece of music

xp having the exact same issue - they’re both so fresh to me that separating “moments” compared to their previous material is proving difficult.

Double Negative in particular is so wonderfully sequenced, with all the transitions. I don't have a particular love for "Tempest" but it's essential connective tissue between two songs I do love

yeah, both otm!

it's new, and that's harder, but also the flow of it. very hard to isolate certain sections

Tempest is my favorite part of the album! That and “always trying to work it out”

i already predict that i'll have the most average/ilx ballot. i'm sorry i always vote for the most obvious things in all the polls. But 2-step is one of the greatest moments of all time when Mimi enters

There's maybe like 3 Low songs I think of as obvious favorites and beyond that, haven't got a clue. That's why I'm so excited for this poll! I had no idea "2-Step" is a favorite, if indeed it is one (I do also like the moment when Mimi comes in)

i have no idea. low is a weird band to talk about. some of the most <3 intimate moments of my life have had the low soundtrack. just these crazy, early 20s conversations, late 20s, mid 30s, there's always low there at these intense moments, the best and worst. for me, the entirety of 2-step is this thing that happens every single time to some degree, and sometimes and burning degrees

a lot of that is nostalgia talking too, of course. it's really hard for me to figure out what low songs are "better".

it's crazy, these songs are more proustian than most. i always think of myself as having a bad memory, but in certain songs i can see the room, the shades, the lighting, the door frame, these places i haven't thought of in years. no one likes to talk about the intimacy in some music, the soft warm volume, holding each other for the whole song, listening, open windows, cool breezes. but low is perfect couples music, for the heights of love, and then also, a few years later, for the absence of that, for listening by yourself, for remembering what happened, drinking yourself to sleep again. they smell like fresh sheets and pbr

(i don't expect 2-step to make top 20 but i have no idea)

all of double negative is great but "fly" through to "always trying to work it out" is one of their very best series of tracks

all among their most gorgeous songs with incredible textural work on top

some of the most beautiful distortion on record since loveless

The funny thing about Double Negative for me is that in my head it's this really distorted, shadowy album - which, well, it is is - but then when I play it again I'm always bowled over by all the pretty melodies I've forgotten - "Fly", "Always Up", "Dancing and Fire", "Poor Sucker" etc.

Hey What might be the opposite: in my head it's more tuneful / straightforward than it actually is.

this poll IS TEARING ME APART, LISA!

sorry

but getting ready to wrap up a 30-track ballot and then just flat out improv an albums ranking, totally skip the covers

*ducks, covers*

I AM SORRY LISA!

I’d been aware of Low for years but the first time I’d listen listened to them was pre “Drums and Guns” so none of the OG era VS current is in my line of view.

ballot sent!

*passes out*

My favourite obscurity, maybe my favourite song (although I couldn't bring myself to vote for it) was a song that Low played to my knowledge once, in a mid-afternoon show in a public park in 1999 (Loring Park MPLS) about a kid that's got lice. On the Low List it used to be called either The Lice Song or Be Nice To People With Lice.

I have no idea if anyone else posting these days has even heard it. I managed to get Alan to sing it during downtime in a show in Wolverhampton in 2000.

And now the internet tells me Alan recorded it for a kids album in 2006 so I'm off to find that.

can i have a voting extension? will get my ballot in today

I've gotten down to 34, cutting these last four is going to be so tough... but I think I know what's getting the axe.

but I think I know what's getting the hatchet.

sounds like a low lyric

'Double Negative' is their most album-as-a-singular work, so even though it's among my very favorites, it didn't immediately put as many individual songs in my first cull as others I don't love quite as much.

For their next album, I'm hoping they go toward the ambient and textural even deeper. Like the transitional parts of 'Double Negative,' or "Hey," but with some 'Bombscare'-like components, and string quartet. Maybe no guitar or drums at all--Mimi switches over to vibrophone and electric hammer dulcimer, Alan goes all concertina and harmonium and ondes martenot. Six tracks, each between 7 and 10 minutes.

Finally got it down to 30, last song to make the cut was..."Cut"

or shall i say, GET the cut...

Sent my ballot in.

I couldn't rank tracks, I tried to start and it was too difficult. I *did* rank albums and covers, though.

but I think I know what's getting the hatchet.
― licorice in the front, pizza in the rear (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, November 16, 2021 2:48 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

sounds like a low lyric

― a (waterface), Tuesday, November 16, 2021 3:03 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

is it “hatchet”?

they really figured out to recreate the sound of listening to music on a flight with their shitty headphones, but in a way that plays to their strengths.

Ones and Sixes definitely laying the foundation for the following albums. Makes me think there’s an interesting rework of getting that album into the mold of DN and HW.

I do think that some of the longer, more ambient tracks from earlier albums also indicated a direction that they could have gone in much earlier, but they took a longer path toward it.

btw if anyone hasn't gotten a reply to their ballot then i haven't received it & you should send it again