Low: Classic or classic?

Agreed w/ the praise for the second half of the new track

the first half reminds me of how i felt upon first listening to The Great Destroyer when it came out

really wish they'd put out a live album of the double negative tour, the alternate live takes of those tracks are very cool

There's quite a few shows from that tour on archive.org.

just realised now that what "fly" has been reminding me of all this time is... u2's "moment of surrender"

same vocal hook

How do people rate this band and their releases, I'm curious. Essential for me are "Long Division" and "Double Negative"

Ask 10 Low fans and you'll get 10 different answers. Personally I rate Secret Name, Things We Lost in the Fire and C'mon the highest. I don't go a bundle on the discordant stuff, I like my Low soft and melodic. Others will rep for the discordant stuff as being their best work.

I've loved everything up until Drums & Guns - ever since that one I still love the live versions of the newer tracks but have been struggling with the albums. I'm into all kinds of loud and harsh stuff but Low = slow and their two voices together, for me, still. Loved the sessions during the last year & I hope having heard the songs live first is going to prepare me better for the hopefully not too antagonistic mixing this time.

i only got into them with double negative and only dug really deep into their entire discography earlier this year (& am doing so again now in anticipation of the new one) & it's pretty much all good to great. the only thing that people seem to generally agree on is that the invisible way is one of their least essential releases, but even then it's not bad or anything.

double negative is certainly a masterpiece and still my favourite but it's obviously at one radical end of their sound. i really like ones and sixes too, the increased focus on sound design compared to a lot of what came before does a lot for me. drums and guns has some of their very best work ("murderer" is maybe their absolute best song?) but is unusually inconsistent for them, i'd really love to hear them explore that sound further though, just without the experiments in panning. i really have yet to fully differentiate the strengths and weaknesses of all their earlier stuff yet though.

drums and guns has some of their very best work ("murderer" is maybe their absolute best song?) but is unusually inconsistent for them

otm. I just happened to listen to this album yesterday. I've always struggled with this record. Really hated it when it first came out, and probably didn't come around on it until 5 or 6 years later. Some truly magnificent songs, and the overall mood of the record is really gripping. Yet to this day I sort of muscle through the first two or three tracks before I finally start to enjoy it.

I guess I need to revisit. With Low I've tended to listen once instead of twice. Trust was my first album of theirs and I loved it. ...Live In Hope was the second and it lacked the hymnal qualities of their latter-day stuff and so I prob didn't give it a fair shake. I found the Albini albums too theatrical with my cursory listen, I do not enjoy the song "Dinosaur Act". I purchased Destroyer and Drums on vinyl when I found them used and disliked them and sold them again-- not a Fridmann fan. Can't figure out why I adore Division and Double Negative unreservedly and have mixed feelings about the rest of it. I usually think of Mimi when I think about how I always want drums to sound

I always say this but Drums & Guns is the pinnacle for me, desert island record.

my first low album was the curtain hits the cast, i just really liked the title so i asked my parents to get it for me for christmas, not knowing exactly what low sounded like but having an idea? anyway the reality was far grander and deeper than whatever impression it was i had at the time. i still love that album to death

my favorites have ranged all over the catalog, loved drums & guns the most for a few years, but these days i find myself returning to trust and ones and sixes the most

secret name/things we lost in the fire for me

"sunflower" is my favorite low song

I listened to "Murderer" at ufo's suggestion earlier and it rules

I think I gotta do a proper survey now that streaming has made it possible

'Breaker' introduced me to sus chords

Also love that lo-fi, low-passed drum machine with the gorgeous roomy handclaps, that left a deep impression.

I always liked Glenn McDonald’s take (in a review of Secret Name or Things We Lost) where he focuses on the sense of gradual narrative created by following the albums in chronological order and hearing their sound slowly open up like a flower turning to the sun.

Obviously they have covered a lot more ground over the subsequent two decades, and it doesn’t really make sense to talk about say Ones and Sixes as more open than The Great Destroyer, but I still get a very strong sense of searching and striving that comes through most strongly by following the arc of their career chronologically.

That said, like Brad, Trust and Ones and Sixes are probably the two I play the most now. Maybe because they both strike really nice balances between a purposeful approach and really lovely songs? IDK.

Murderer EP is your goal as imo the versions of Murderer and especially Silver Rider are superior on it to lp versions

both versions of "murderer" are perfect and i don't think i could choose between them

except that panning though lol

these days i just listen to drums & guns in mono when i'm listening with headphones (99% of the time)

oh man i always thought i was the only one who liked Trust the most but ofc Brad and Tim also like that one the most

MY PEOPLE!!!

love to see that some people rate Trust as high as I do. it always seemed under appreciated among the fan base.

Trust is also my favorite.

I think it has a lot to do with when it came out / where I was in my Low fandom, definitely egged on by the kinda meh/indifferent reception it got at the time

fine, you two are also my people

Trust is the first Low LP i bought so yeah, sentimental fave

The sequence from In The Drugs to La La Song is one of the strongest 5 song runs in pretty much any band's career.

^ the next one after La La Song is Point of Disgust - so I'd bump that run up to 6 songs.

Anyway, Christmas.

all of my people get paid up to $0.50 per post. i'm just throwing that out there

and i'll create the union for me so you can fire me and give a generous severance package

we are called the Secret Namers

the pitchfork sunday Flash from the Past review often trails sustained ilm thread revivals by a few weeks, so i'll just say this: Secret Namers can earn up to $0.50 per post

I spent the early part of the pandemic filling in some gaps in my Low collection, still need to get the debut, Christmas and A Lifetime of Temporary Relief as the main ones I'm missing.

revisited their first three records this morning

i could live in hope is really such a wonderful fully-formed debut, everything's there already. i love sparhawk's guitar, obviously very influenced by the cure at their best, but stripped down.
long division has a very similar sound to the debut of course, but it's even quieter and slower, and doesn't have the same atmosphere to it, solid but not quite as compelling overall.
the curtain hits the cast feels a little warmer than their first two? i've seen people say it's their darkest but it doesn't quite feel it to me. really good record, continues on from long division with its sparseness but successfully brings back the atmosphere & expansive track lengths of i could live in hope & adds a little more intensity? "do you know how to waltz" is so immense!

got into Low because Things We Lost in the Fire and Trust showed up on an ILM poll years and years ago. they are still my two favorites. I love mostly all of em though

Again it seems it's time to do a full Low albums/tracks poll... Again I'd love to run it but don't realistically have time : (

I could probably do tabulation if others could help with images and rollout. About time I pulled my weight on here

BUT

at this point, I think the poll should wait a few months after the new album

I'd feel weird about doing a Low poll before they actually pack it in

Is there any consensus about top 5 tracks so far? Feels like there might be as many #1 selections as there are poll voters.

there could be a series of low polls by decades, followed by low-showdowns, followed by sweet merciful death

xp and yeah that's not my post, i agree! on the non-consensus, i mean. :) i think a couple of them would probably be consensus faves (particularly Things We Lost in the Fire songs...I might be wrong and jinxing it now), but in general, it would be pretty unpredictable

Wow, I felt it would be hard to follow up Double Negative. This single hints that they are going to do so with gusto.

yeah wait for a few months after the new album before doing a poll but i'd love to see it & there's clearly plenty of interest. aldo is still listed as having dibs on running it iirc

As I've said various times ^^^ I don't have the time these days so happy for anyone that wants to do it to do it.

ah i didn't realise

i guess november would be the earliest time it'd make sense to run one after the new album, or first thing next year after EOY stuff is done?

Don't know if this will work formatting-wise, but nice use of the meme

When @lowtheband heads into the studio during a pandemic. pic.twitter.com/HjV48e7zKJ

— Tim Unsell (@devotiondoubt) June 24, 2021