Low: Classic or classic?

they are playing a really cool outdoor festival called the square lake festival tonight and tomorrow night in mn, hoping to score a way in, but it should be lovely, i would imagine this is more their speed, hoping to get a way in even though it's sold out

https://www.squarelakefestival.com/

The album fucking rules

xposts warm and bleak go together naturally i think. depression/sadness is often like a warm blanket you wrap around yourself; it can become the most comfortable

Lol @your dn DJP

Andy Bell & co. singing "HEY WHAT the hell you think you've done" every time I think about this album

I thought about going to the Square Lake thing, bet it will be awesome

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et6SgyP7zMU

tons of evidence on this very thread that the invisible way has a reputation of sounding typical and unadventurous for a low record and i think it's like... at least a little undeserved. for one thing, it's got its own sound (ums otm about tweedy's production, which is one of the best parts of it), sorta like they built a country-rock record out of flourishes only, and the result is the gentlest low album (which is still, at an audible depth below the surface, unbearably tense). idk i didn't spend a lot of time with it when it came out but during this run-through i discovered i really like it

i am a weirdo tho, i think the worst/least distinguished low record is the debut

OUT

(Sorry, I have feelings about that album, since I saw them for the first time right before its release a month later.)

that is amazing

the way i break it down is that low are less great to me when they're reminding me of other slowcore bands and are greater when they're reminding me of no one so much as themselves, and i could live in hope is more of the scene than they ever were again

it's a great record i'm not really knocking it

of course after saying all those nice things about the invisible way, i put on ones and sixes and thought “thank god they returned to exploding their sound from the inside out.” also appreciate that it’s way louder than either of fridmann records, a development i’m sure more than a few low fans hated lol

Speaking of (potentially) under-appreciated Low material I think one of my favorite songs of theirs overall (on the "catchy" end of their spectrum of songs) is "California." I often listen to it multiple times in a row!

Congregation from Ones & Sixes was playing during a brutal fight scene in Devs.

i was about to say that the great destroyer is an indie rock record that makes most indie rock sound redundant xp

xpost, agree about California. Same for me with Canada (plus it has a fun video)

"landslide," jesus christ, what a masterpiece

I'm not sure I ever slotted Low in with other slowcore bands, but I guess they fit well with the likes of Codeine, if not Bedhead or ... whomever else counts. I do know that when the band's first album appeared in the mail way back when the Kramer connection made me immediately consider Galaxie 500, but of course they only loosely share some sensibilities with them, too. Low, especially in the early days, always struck me as one of the most austere and confrontational of those loosely defined acts. No guitar solos, no real release, at least not until "Curtain" and "Waltz." There are infamous stories of the band reacting to audience chatter by just getting quieter and quieter, and slower and slower.

"Ones and Sixes," I think that came out when I was (stupidly) at my most Low ambivalent, where I somehow still hadn't quite processed their genius. Probably the album that came before it didn't help, honestly. But I was catching up one day and "No Comprende" came on, and I remember immediately lifting my head and thinking, jesus, how in the world did I miss this?! This is the heaviest, most awesome band of all time.

I had the same experience with “When I Go Deaf” and The Great Destroyer.

For me, the run of C'mon/Invisible Way/Ones and Sixes were the first time that they had put songs on their albums that felt really hard to love or, dare I say it, actively annoying, among their usual standout highs on the rest of the record - not naming names, but I'm thinking of their second sides. Since then they've course corrected back to albums where you could maybe lose one or two tracks, but definitely nothing that I'd ever thought brought the rest of the record down in comparison.

the low songs that remind me the most of galaxie 500 are "starfire" and "la la la song"

i could live in hope is still pretty distinctive among the slowcore scene at the time & one of the strongest records from the scene. the curtain hits the cast goes on to do nearly everything it did better but it's still a top 5 low album

At Square Lake, amazing setting, stage built on a small family farm, woods around the homestead

Native American singer Joe Rainey Sr. opening with a surprise guest appearance by Andrew Broder doing some heavy bass almost industrial stuff with heavily digitally altered samples of Ojibwe (assuming) chanting, really cool

^Jealous

if we ever do a low poll please make the ballots at least 40 places long

all comparisons are futile. low are almost completely individual. they might have their influences and share production values, but they've gone their own way since day one and stuck to it.

i was thinking of running a poll in november, or maybe it should be left until feb/march? how long do we need to let hey what settle in? if anyone else really wants to though i'm happy to leave it to them

Nov sounds good. Though they're on such a streak lately that part of me thinks they'll keep coming out with songs good enough to place in their top 40 (which isn't really a reason to not do the poll now!)

I'll have some pix and video to post later but this was one of the most amazing shows I've ever seen

there's a couple of live songs on the youtubes (low square lake, filters -> sort by upload date)

Days Like These pic.twitter.com/BOOESDZTEe

— kyle (@solace) September 11, 2021

some more in this thread

hey

what?

Now I have a mental image of Low covering “True Blue” in my head

Went to both Square Lake shows. Really amazing how their vocals sound just as good live as they do on record. I like pretty much every song on the new LP — it’s rare that a band is putting out some of their best work 30 years into their career

even after double negative i can barely believe they put out a song like "hey"

Yeah that's the song of the album for me. I mean, a very strong album overall, but that song's in a different stratosphere

yeah “hey” is the one that stopped me in my tracks when listening to the album

"Ones and Sixes," I think that came out when I was (stupidly) at my most Low ambivalent, where I somehow still hadn't quite processed their genius. Probably the album that came before it didn't help, honestly.

Although the common sentiment at the time was that Ones & Sixes was an improvement over Invisible Way, I nevertheless feel that Ones & Sixes earned a big reassessment after Double Negative came out.

So I listened to the new one for the first time today. My kneejerk reaction was that it was great but also hard to compete with the revelation of Double Negative. A few tracks knocked me out instantly—“Hey” is a massive peak in the middle of the record; “Don’t Walk Away” is like a throwback to more traditional Low but it rises so gloriously out of the rest of the album. Still, I felt that a lot of the album was keeping me at arm’s length.

And then, wow, “The Price You Pay.” Might be the best closing track on any Low album. I want to see this band playing in an arena.

Well I sat down after it was over, turned on a baseball game on mute and started idly reading through this thread, and started the album over again without much thought. The second time through just feels astounding. It’s weird, like I was trying so hard to focus on it the first time through and somehow missed so much, and then I just let it play and all of its greatness shook me. I’m kinda stunned by this album.

I wasn't totally sold on the singles TBH, after the one-two punch of Ones & Sixes and Double Negative - the latter is devastatingly wonderful.
But I'm listening to Hey What now and oh boy those first two tracks and the segue between them is phenomenal.

I listened back to a stack of Low in preparation for this, and I have to say it was interesting hearing the Porter Ricks remix of "Down" again. What a stunner.
Nothing about the last 3 albums should be at all surprising to long-term Low fans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8IHnd_KF9o
In my typically backwards way I was into the owL Remix album before I was across much of Low's actual output...

Updated my dual cross-oeuvre Low comps for 'Hey What'. They're not "best ofs" per se--rather, mixes taking at max one track per album/EP, in chronological order, that I think would introduce a new listener effectively or illustrate the band's constant exploration. Focus is via the duality at their core, the light and the darkness.

.@lowtheband has been one of my very favorite bands for 25 years. They always create intense beauty from the struggle between light and darkness in our souls.

'A Light in Darkness' is how I would introduce someone to Low. With 'HEY WHAT,' light and dark join into something new. pic.twitter.com/FvepXGVeqG

— Musicophilia (@musicophiliamix) September 12, 2021

https://archive.org/details/low2017-10-16.amsterdam.ca-14.flac16/low.2017-10-16.ca-14.mastered.t02.flac

have been looking through bootlegs today & found this great one from the 'organ reframed' festival in 2017 where they performed mostly early versions of double negative songs arranged for pipe organ & drum machine

the song titles are mostly different though:
"horse breaker" is "rome (always in the dark)"
"it's all been done" is the double negative outtake which was a japanese bonus track
"dancing" is "dancing and blood"
"blood" is "quorum"
"what's the world" is an unreleased song they've only played once since, for one of last year's instagram performances
"interlude" is "the son, the sun"? i think?
"soldier" is "fly"
"i've had it all" is another unreleased song

"Ones and Sixes," I think that came out when I was (stupidly) at my most Low ambivalent, where I somehow still hadn't quite processed their genius. Probably the album that came before it didn't help, honestly.

Although the common sentiment at the time was that Ones & Sixes was an improvement over Invisible Way, I nevertheless feel that Ones & Sixes earned a big reassessment after Double Negative came out.

― sctttnnnt (pgwp), Sunday, 12 September 2021 21:44 (yesterday) link

Absolutely. The general indie-verse was overlooking it as I think there was an assumption that Low had at that point settled, as many veteran indie bands do, into a solid but not-so-daring version of themselves that nobody was really inclined to get particularly excited about. Another indie band playing indie music. Their recent albums were cheap in the used bins, and their cool stock was Low. Double Negative was such a fresh sound that it instantly flipped their brand perception to "innovative geniuses" and their whole discography gets reassessed in the process.

I feel very lucky that I just happened to be getting into Low around the time Ones and Sixes came out. I started with the Transmission EP (bc it's my favorite Joy Division song), continued to contemporary LP Long Division, then went "These guys never broke up, right? I wonder what they're up to these days..." and proceeded to have my mind blown

i am so happy low are on top of the world right now.

I wasn't to into it as a single, but in the context of the album, "Days Like These" hits much harder. Been humming it all weekend, too.

ugh, *too into it, jeezus.

I listened to Invisible Way over the weekend, and I still like it. 'On My Own', vamping out on "happy birthday happy birthday happy birthday happy birthday", come on, who else would do that. I'm glad that exists in addition to the distortionverse of the last few albums.