Blogger ate the first draft of this after I was done typing. Here is how it went as best I can remember.
I remember the first time I heard the music of Duluth, MN slowcore pioneers Low. It was December of 1999 and my father had just read the Best Music of 1999 list in the Chicago Tribune and decided to purchase as many of the albums on that list as he could find. One of those was Low’s Secret Name. After listening to the album his reaction was something like, “That music makes me want to kill myself.” Not surprising for powerful music that seems weighted down by burden and sorrow.
Low’s newest album Drums And Guns comes on the heels of their most rockin’ and unexpected effort to date (The Great Destroyer). And while I didn’t know what to expect from Drums And Guns, except for the (for Low) upbeat “Hatchet” as a bit of relief in the middle, the album awfully fucking minimal and much more stark than the band’s previous work.
Don’t listen to Drums And Guns while trying to fall asleep. It is like being trapped inside a nightmare. Alan and Mimi’s mournful harmonies drift atop sparse instrumentation that includes organ, piano, drums (both electronic and real), and the occasional guitar creating sorrowful almost hymn-like dirges.
Drums And Guns is deliberately and unsettlingly slow. It is almost painfully drawn out. Some of the adjectives I wrote down while listening to the album include barren, cold, sad, isolated, etc… It would be like listening to Nanang Tatang after years of drug abuse and a failed marriage. Drums And Guns is out now on Sub Pop
MP3 | Low - Breaker Drums And Guns
MP3 | Low - Always Fade Drums And Guns
1 Comments ↓
This is probably the result of my pirating of the CD, but: did you find that the vocals were all mixed to the left stereo on the new Low album?
Post a Comment
← Can you see the sunset from the southside?