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

There's also the really beautiful cover of Rihanna's "Stay," which absolutely blows the original out of the water afaic

really need to spend some more time with their eps and the stuff on that boxset, but even without those this is gonna be hard as hell

I just made a playlist, it had 59 songs on it. Most of Curtain is on there— that's my desert island Low album. I quickly deleted six songs. Don't understand how people can do this.

just a note that you can take a gander at some former iterations of LOW polls below.

What is the best Low album/release?
What is the best Low album/release? (Encore version)

It's still Curtain for me, in terms of albums.

What are people's favourites from the boxset?

My initial list of 30 is no way in step with the most played on Spotify or Last FM. This is very unexpected.

People! Start pitching!

Can I urge everybody to take another listen to "If You Were Born Today". It is possibly the purest distillation of what Low is, at least to me tonight. Beautiful.

I wish ppl wouldn't pitch! I want those raw numbers

Also, I've wanted to start a band forever that does sludge metal versions of Low songs

If you ever wondered what Low would do with "Africa." From 10 yrs ago. Not voting for this one lol

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

Listening to the playlist I made earlier, it seems a lot of Low songs make me cry. Maybe I'm just emotional.

The songs are just so beautiful

They really are the only "indie rock" band I like

One the best things about them being essentially a stable husband and wife duo is that I feel like they'll just keep putting out music together as long as they're alive.

Listening to the debut in order to start whittling down my list and this is already feeling impossible.

the most essential track from the rarities boxset is "venus"

some of the curtain hits the cast outtakes on it are pretty good too, "turning over" and "walk you out"

"Venus" will def be on my ballot.

i’m fond of “tomorrow one” and “old man song” from the box

Don't sleep on the Bombscare EP!

You weren't kidding, this might be my favorite of the EPs! The Murderer EP is also up there

yeah the murderer ep is pretty essential, the alternate early versions of "murderer" and "silver rider" are great and "from your place on sunset" is up with their best epics. interestingly it's the only time they worked as a duo prior to hey what, it was recorded during the period zak sally had left the band for a bit after the trust tour - he rejoined because they got a sudden offer to open for radiohead after supergrass pulled out.

Man, "Silver Rider." That's one of the (many) Low tracks I for some reason occasionally forget (because there are a lot of them), and then I see the band live and they play it and I think, wow, this band ...

Turning my attention to the albums rankings, I just realized how many I will be forced to leave out. This is hard!

I'm going to admit that I don't think any tracks from the past two albums will make it onto my ballot, none from Cmon or The Invisible Way, either.

As for HEY WHAT and Double Negative, tho— I love the records but the first five or six albums feel like they're part of my DNA or something, and I'm finding it much more difficult to winnow down tracks from those albums because it feels like I'm denying something that's given me succor and solace for a decade-plus.

I admit tho that most of Curtain remains on the list. Why? Because it's their best album.

definitely one of them!

Voted

I am still discovering this band but I am excited to cast a newcomer's ballot with whatever I can cover in two weeks. I don't think I had heard anything by them when Double Negative came out (maybe the debut), and I listened to Curtain for the first time this morning.

I've been a fan for about 20 years and have always considered them to be a very good band, but I didn't think of them as One of the Best Bands in the World until the opening moments of "Quorum".

I will most likely have a song from HEY WHAT in my top 2.

Quorum is great

Their discography is huge. I submitted my ballot without relistening, just going by the tracklists of each album and picking the songs I remember I liked the most but I’m sure I left some great ones out and I may have overrated a few of them.

yeah the murderer ep is pretty essential, the alternate early versions of "murderer" and "silver rider" are great and "from your place on sunset" is up with their best epics. interestingly it's the only time they worked as a duo prior to hey what, it was recorded during the period zak sally had left the band for a bit after the trust tour - he rejoined because they got a sudden offer to open for radiohead after supergrass pulled out.

― ufo, Tuesday, November 2, 2021 5:34 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I was at those Radiohead shows at MSG and that crowd was definitely not there for Low. Sparhawk played night 2 with a new guitar purchase courtesy of the gig windfall iirc.

Listened to Drums and Guns again. Reminded me that it has so many great tracks and serves as a good transition to the more recent work.
Ugh, it’s going to be hard to get the list down to 30 tracks.

Will you accept unranked ballots?

oh, it's 30 tracks? not 25? that makes my task a little easier, i'm down to 37

unranked ballots are fine, just specify that's what they are

I whizzed through Trust, Great Destroyer and Drums & Guns today and narrowed them down to about six songs total. Now I’m onto C’mon and, man, I just don’t get the folks who think this is lesser Low. This album is so gorgeous.

I think because I’m going through the whole discography in such quick succession this week, C’mon is really resonating with Things We Lost in the Fire. They feel like twins to me right now.

c'mon is very solid but not much on it is up with their very best, i don't think anything except "nothing but heart" will make its way onto my ballot. it's definitely a continuation of things we lost in the fire, going further in that direction. probably their most lush & accessible album.

the great destroyer is one that has really shot up in my estimations lately, it's a really remarkably strong rock album, every song is very very good. something "just stand back" is very uncharacteristic for them but it's so good at what it does.

Yeah, that’s the one, that caught my attention on relisten - I think the more abrasive sound now feels more in line when you compile their most recent 2 albums.

yeah i think alan's talked about it being them seeing how loud they could go at the time, but they've certainly surpassed that with hey what

i do wish the studio version of "pissing" went as far as they do when they play it live, it's fantastic.

great version at 34:30 here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I45V99gx25Y

it sounds kinda Harvey Milk-lite, and I mean that as a compliment

I can see "California" and "Just Stand Back" disappointing fans who were accustomed to their earlier sound but I love both songs

The band's catalog is like cresting waves in the ocean. It's constantly moving and hypnotic, but some of it is taller and more impressive.

I bet Alan would surf if he didn't live in Minnesota. Though I guess you can surf Lake Superior!

https://www.minnesotamonthly.com/travel-recreation/recreation/why-winter-is-surfing-season-in-minnesota/

Over The Ocean?

I feel like the "heavy" aspects of the band are really present on earlier tracks like "Laugh" (off Curtain) and of course "The Lamb," among others on Trust.

It is perhaps the commercial accessibility of Cmon that I find so distasteful— it simply doesn't sound like the band I fell in love with, and none of the songs stand out to me at all.

I've been thinking about why the earlier stuff grabs me in ways that even the much more recent albums don't, and while I have some ideas, I'm still not totally sure they hold up.

Hmm I don't think of C'mon as commercially accessible any more than anything else they've done. It's not as dissonant or edgy as Trust or Drums & Guns, but the aesthetic of C'mon has always been a prominent part of their palette. You could make a whole album of "Low pop" in the vein of Try to Sleep (Venus, Starfire, Immune, Dinosaur Act, etc.)

Anyway, shrug. I think Nightingale, Done, You See Everything, and Especially Me are all really lovely songs, and Majesty/Magic is a great mini-epic whose main flaw is that it's shown up by the even more epic Nothing But Heart.

i guess that I've just often thought of those songs as the worst songs on their respective albums.

funnily enough, Cmon has fallen *below* The Invisible Way for me as a result of this poll

“Nightingale” is making my ballot - probably my fave from that album.

from the last graph of the Pfork review of the record:

As such, C'mon feels more like a collection drawn from throughout the last decade than a completely cohesive album. This could be viewed as the band sorting through the progress it's made in search of the next turn-- there are even a few songs that come close to revisiting the glacial sparseness of their earliest music. This is all to say that, if you already like Low, C'mon will not disappoint you, and though it's not their best album, it's a fairly accessible distillation of where they've been.

Sums it up for me— many of the tracks feel like they're treading old ground, sort of running through the motions. Nothing on it stands out. It also doesn't help that I am infinitely annoyed by the first track on the record, a place where LOW are usually exceptional.

re-listened to the great destroyer on my commute this morning, the point upthread about fridmann’s production choices being more tolerable after their recent run of albums has some truth in it. still think the middle third kinda drags. there’s still three or four songs on it that may make my ballot

yes there's still a bit longer - still open for the next 8-9 hours if anyone has last minute ballots

how long of a rollout do people want? thinking top 60 tracks but i can make it a bit longer, we have more than enough ballots to get something meaningful out of going a bit beyond that.

& more terrible pun thread name suggestions welcome (i can't think of any more beyond the few that were suggested upthread)

Do it as long as the results are interesting...

There's a point where it just becomes stragglers and loosies: everything above that imo

it'll be somewhere from 60 to 80, any more than that and it's the real stragglers

I do like "too LOW" as a title.

If we're punning, then how about "sometimes your CHOICE is not enough".

But if it has to have poll in there, "On our way from Stockholm, it started to POLL"?

do you know how to poll

oh i see that's the name of this thread

let's bring it out for an encore though!

If you were polled today, we'd vote you in place eight

Cause there's nothing as sad as a man on his back counting polls

I verified the math and double checked the poll

Fear of polls and a disappointing father

A poll shot up like a bright red snowflake

"...But here we sit debating math"

filling polls with tiny sounds

And if I POLL the mighty and strong will be rejected

There'll be just enough votes / For one special poll

60-80 More Reasons to Forget

i’m fond of “tomorrow one” and “old man song” from the box

― donna rouge, Monday, November 1, 2021 6:45 PM (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

hear hear

The video for Over the Ocean is nice

The track at my #1 was above everything else for me (I avoided mentioning it in this thread) and the next of the top 15 were somewhat easy, but it was hard to decide on most of them after that, except on feelings in the moment, because there were too many great tracks to fit in

In retrospect I wish I had place Little Argument with Myself higher

xp to brad only one of those ended up on my ballot ha

well i sure hope it was "old man song"!!!!

ballot sent

ok that's a wrap, voting closed

results are a little weird honestly, but that makes it exciting

All You Pretty PeoPOLL, You’re All Gonna Die

Too Low is an excellent poll name.

Can you reveal early--how many ballots received?

too low!

either that, or Low with a bunch of drudge sirens on both sides

🚨🚨LOW🚨🚨POLL🚨🚨RESULTS🚨🚨

very catchy

whelp, after a week of immense jet lag, I ended up DJing a party yesterday, got very wasted and was exhausted and missed the deadline. Fail. Well, my top 10 would have been 80% from the last 2 albums, so probably a good thing to avoid adding recency bias to the tally.

I'll be watching intently though. ufo, thanks for running this!

recency bias would have been fine though, there's a lot of different views of low among the ballots, but my apologies for not being able to wait further for you octobeard.

here's the results

Too LOW: ILM Artist Poll #111 - Low - RESULTS

whoa, awesome! for some reason i was expecting tomorrow, although now i realize it's because you're in my tomorrow now! :D

*HEADS THERE*