Low: Classic or classic?

Or, like, Wolfgang Voigt?

The new record, and especially the way it starts off, reminds me of Microphones' Mt. Eerie record. Crawling from out of the rubble and noise to find a pitch-perfect, pastoral and awe-inspiring beauty in quietness and precision. It's everything and more you could want from Low.

xxp you should've been listening closer imo. what's so remarkable to me about this album is that it manages to be top 3 in a band with consistently excellent output

I was a consistent listener up to The Great Destroyer, but outside of the occasional "Drone Not Drones" show I've been one of the ambivalent - dutifully listening to each new album since, but never making a deep enough connection to keep coming back. Maybe I wanted them to go further?

I admit this is kinda where I've been at, and ever since the leak earlier this year the sheer avalanche of praise has kicked in my...I will never call it 'contrarian,' but simply my 'okay, I'm sure it's great so that actually means I can wait to get around to this' reflex. (Which has kept my sanity more than once over the years -- rather than rushing into something which I'm sure I'll like I'd rather get to it when the impulse strikes.) That said everyone mentioning about how it suits the current sociopolitical situation has left me even more guarded; I specifically avoided ANOHNI's album the other year for that reason, but unlike ANOHNI I geniunely like Low's music and have from the get-go so I'll approach this a little more warmly. Still, though.

enh I think the "this is the Low album about Our Moment!!" or whatever argument doesn't hold up at all

the sonics are more blwon-out but it's no more emotionally fraught than say Trust

That said everyone mentioning about how it suits the current sociopolitical situation has left me even more guarded

these people are wrong

Good to know!

i compared it to twin peaks season 3 the other day (a stupid comparison but one i can't get out of my head) which can either be read as "of the moment" or not, but the former is prob the least interesting lens through which to view it

i guess one could make the argument that the sonics reflect the sociopolitical feeling of the moment. but that could really be said about most music

I think the "this is the Low album about Our Moment!!" or whatever argument doesn't hold up at all

actually thinking about it now, drums & guns was an 'of the moment' album too in the wake of 9/11. that's also their best album

i compared it to twin peaks season 3 the other day (a stupid comparison but one i can't get out of my head) which can either be read as "of the moment" or not, but the former is prob the least interesting lens through which to view it

― princess of hell (BradNelson), Tuesday, September 11, 2018 5:01 PM (twenty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i guess 'the tempest' would be episode 8?
stupidly, when i hear the album i can only think about paul schrader's first reformed.

the oppressive atmosphere this album transmits is one which seems to me be very much of the moment

I guess cause sonics aside it's so much of a piece with every Low album since the debut? Idk I find their music has such a timeless, totemic quality that I hesitate to forge associations like that. (Then again I'm also hesitant to see the current political moment as being totally distinct from what came before, so...)

(Then again I'm also hesitant to see the current political moment as being totally distinct from what came before, so...)

yeah this is mostly it in general

Then again I'm also hesitant to see the current political moment as being totally distinct from what came before, so...

not really, maybe, yes, sure. but these are all things that built up over decades anyway

and don't seem to have much to do with the new low album unless you're projecting hard onto it

which is honestly fine

what brad said

Can the Low experts talk about other precursors to this album in their discography that more casual fans might've missed (hinted at by a couple of people earlier)?

ones and sixes, drums and guns, bombscare

btw thanks elvis for posting "half light" upthread, a version of low i had never heard before

it reminds me of "down by the water" kinda

they have so many great odds and ends, I hope one day they make a worthy rarities/loosies comp (too much of A Lifetime of Temporary Relief is inessential)

Also the Drones Not Drones thing people have mentioned: https://drone-not-drones.bandcamp.com/track/low-2

And some of the Retribution Gospel Choir stuff (esp. earlier on).

xp

wow this is gorgeous. i'm feeling them after not listening for a long time.

is this thing even out or are all you hosers just listening to the low bitrate NPR stream

i'm just listening to a few tracks on bandcamp

low bitrate NPR stream here

out on friday. will be buying.

NPR stream. I haven't listened to their albums since Trust but this seems markedly different from what they were doing before then? There were some noise/drone elements at times but they always struck me as somewhat peripheral to the sound of what was a m/l soft pop/rock band.

yeah it's not like it's really that abrasive, it has a very soft sound imo, richly produced classic rock vibes, harmonies more slick than i remembered

i didn't really catch all that many of the lyrics but i still got this feeling that they somehow seem more honest and less portentous, idk.

It was always there even when it wasn't there

portentousness is sort of their backbone but they seem to have aged well around it

It's not about the abrasive noise/drone you play, it's the abrasive noise/drone you don't play

I'm not saying it's a Merzbow album but it's still pretty surprising to me.

I wouldn't deny that the sound is quite different here (though again it was suggested by some of the tracks on Ones and Sixes), but I feel that the way the band use keyboards and static and processed sounds here (a lot of the arrangements seem to be built on distorted samples of their own vocals) is strongly consistent with their prior general songwriting/arranging approach: especially the way that some of the tracks seem to be almost a grim caricature of sidechain compression with the melodies being obliterated by a regular but slow overwhelming kick like they're constantly disappearing into and re-emerging from a black hole. It's very much a digital counterpart to their original trick of focusing the listener's attention on stark, very slow, endlessly repeated guitar chords.

It's also interesting to me that the band has complicated their close-harmony vocal attack by writing (or arranging) these songs where it's like neither singer can "complete" the song by themselves but also there's a certain fragmented feel to the way their vocals overlap: these songs feel born of structural conflict in a way that their darkest and most comparable prior work (e.g. much of Trust and Drums and Guns) do not.

another release that foreshadows this one a little bit is their EP for the Travels in Constants series, The Exit Papers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TMgOwP8M_8

Is the thing on the cover of Double Negative supposed to be something?

i have somehow never listened to this band before but the new album is very cool, like if Fennesz made a pop album

i know this one isn't supposed to be particularly representative for them, but where do i go from here? what are the essential low albums?

i imagine that like a lot of bands, the first one you hear (and play on repeat) is the one that sticks with you the longest. for me, that was Things We Lost in the Fire.

first LP I got and listened to extensively was Long Division, which is fantastic and contains my favorite Low song "Shame", but it was Secret Name that just pwned me and made them one of my very favorite acts

my parents bought me the curtain hits the cast for christmas when i was in high school. it blew my mind but i also found it kinda hard to listen to. what really sealed the deal was hearing the great destroyer when it came out

curtain was my first & still my favorite, it's such a good depression album

i had secret name early on but didn't really get it. saw an all-ages show they did at a tiny comedy club in provo, was electrified. fell in love with things we lost in the fire. lost track of them after that because my bf at the time did not like them. he thought they weren't ex-mormon enough or something. i think he was snooty about them because he had been part of a troupe of folk/indie/psych musicians and coil worshippers from provo who probably thought they were more interesting than low. anyway, now i'm like hey i like this band and they made a bunch of albums since 2001, cool.

my parents bought me the curtain hits the cast for christmas when i was in high school

wow your parents rule

Things We Lost.... was my gateway

they bought it bc it was on my christmas list! i was a hip, pfork-reading kid