Low: Classic or classic?

This felt timely to me more in the sense that the sonic approach felt like a brilliantly contemporary advancement on their characteristic themes and methods. Low have a long-standing interest in noise and quietness (not silence, quietness; more ambiguous, no neat gesture towards the abstract). Pgwp’s breakdown upthread describes those Kranky albums exactly (muffled edges, vocals veering off-harmony, that nagging feeling....). When they turned up the volume on Drums and Guns it had the same effect, still that same sense of straining to hear, voices on the edge of hearing. This album feels like a push forward and and brilliant resolution of that paradox. The way voices are obliterated by absent noises and drums; noise and silence are resolved into one thing. That first harmony you hear on Quorum, where the empty space of that characteristic snare instead gouges hollows out of their voice. Like that air-raid sheet of guitar that blares out over the vocals on Breaker it sets a similar precedent for how noise is now a strategy for effecting that same shellshocked ("giant Xs on yr eyes") shattered sense of their voices as human, vulnerable, receding, only this time the noise is strangely a kind of silence. They sound like they're gasping for air.

this album has REALLY resonated with me.

Their songwriting feels drone-based and minimal and sort of electronic or uncanny even when they're playing acoustic. Which I think is why my partner doesn't connect with them, when I was like "hey, here's an indie song-based band that I like!" and she's like "but they're not, really". And also why this new one doesn't feel like a radical re-invention to me, just another version of Low.

yeah, i think that's what people are generally saying here

Just listened today. This album is absolute bonkers

It does sound like Fennesz to me... I assume most of the drones are actually guitars being sent to digital hell so it’s not a bad comparison.

a lot of Oval too.

also Ekkehard Ehlers, I guess (whatever happened to him?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8RRy8AIuGk

OwL remix Low from 1998 should get a mention too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8IHnd_KF9o

Pretty sure Sparhawk plays open G. Or at least learning reading chord progressions of their songs introduced me to it.

Their covers of "I Started A Joke" and "Lord Can You Hear Me" both feel like guilty pleasures but I've worn them both out

I'll just keep posting this because I have the feeling lots of people loving 'Double Negative' won't have heard a fairly obscure (UK-only?) EP from 2000. But it's definitely the work that firmly cemented my love of Low back at the time, and made me hope for (but not be surprised by) an album like this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRoIbBbJx4U

Definitely not UK only. When it came out I just thought of that EP as a novelty, since Low collaborating with Spring Heel Jack was, at least on paper, as random as them touring with Soul Coughing, even if the SHJ collar worked out.

I would've thought it a novelty, too, based on Spring Heel Jack's work to that point. But the marriage works so perfectly, and it suggested more fully than anything else to that point that Alan and Mimi's melodic and lyrical sensibilities could be served wonderfully by music that wasn't just guitar/bass/tiny drum kit (much as I loved that formula for them, too).

Y'all made me listen to Low for the first time since, I think, Things We Lost in the Fire. This seems way more promising than I would have guessed!

Best Low collab of all time is this one:

https://youtu.be/YlU8hY_xOYs

Feat transient waves and piano magic. ImI

^^yeah that's a beaut

Anyone who hasn’t heard Low in a long time should check out the pair of Low covers Robert Plant included on his Band of Joy album, they’re extremely good.

listened to Drums and Guns and I like it a lot, I love the sound palette of drones & shambolic drum loops layered over each other, except for when the vocals are hard-panned which is something I really dislike. all the other panning is very cool but having vocals or other leads hard-panned just makes it feel very unbalanced listening on headphones

yeah, to this day i have never had the opportunity to listen to drums and guns through speakers at a loud volume, as i'm sure was intended. listening to it on headphones is uncomfortable because of the panning. it sounds good at a moderate volume but i'd love to just crank it the way you can with headphones.

The more I listen to it the more I think that maybe I never listened to "Ones and Sixes?" Because I've been listening to it a lot the last few days, more than the new one (for now), and I love everything about it.

When did low become a £30 concert ticket band? I'm sure the last time they were here it was around half that.

Demand? My ticket over here was only $20, plus $7 for service charges.

of course, demand-pull inflation but I'm not entirely sure that justifies the sharp hike. I want them to be paid well, of course (musicians get little enough recompense these days) and I can afford it but i do balk at it a little. it's entirely possible that they are doing something that makes this a particularly expensive thing to get on the road but i was surprised at the cost.

let's just blame brexit and go see Low.

That's a great LCD Soundsystem remix.

:)

i am really loving Double Negative, it's evoking very strongly imagery for me of tides drifting in and out on a remote beach, with the occasional wave crashing

feels more like a drone album that happens to contain fragments of songs in it rather than the other way around - with the way the tracks flow into each other it really feels like one continuous piece

just listened to it. bits were nice but it didn't leave much impression. might give it another go, maybe it's like a magic eye painting

got philly tix last night. STOKED

it's entirely possible that they are doing something that makes this a particularly expensive thing to get on the road but i was surprised at the cost.

Pretty sure it's a standard Low trio tour? But I'm looking forward to hearing these songs in that format.

Just bought Double Negative but have decided to replay the album/EP catalogue in its entirety, in chronological order, before listening to it.

Currently on Long Division, which is new to me.

One of my happiest memories in my brief music career was getting to share a bill with Low (and Soul Coughing, lol) at the Black Cat in DC way back in the mid 90s. Had never heard of them at that point, and was utterly blown away by their performance. Felt bad that they had to go on and perform in front of a loud and rowdy audience after my own goofy rock band antics.

my friend played the guitar on that low/piano magic collab. still in my top five low tracks ever.

Giving a listen on this Sunday morning. The praise is accurate.

(Referring to Double Negative, but akm's comment is also correct.)

One of the very few remaining bands whose albums I will buy on release day, every single time. I’ve still only seen them live once, amazingly.

I've seen them a shamefully few times all told. The upcoming March show will be my fifth, if you count the radio session they played on my show back in 1994.

their live show is not to be missed and i try to see them live any time they come to town. their finest, most transcendent artistic achievement imo is silver rider as performed live

I'd almost wonder how a show for this album will work. I just said elsewhere that I would be fine with the March show simply being them performing the album straight through, no encore and no other songs.

They played a little over half the album at their show in Nashville last spring. They did two 35 minute or so sets sets - one new material and one old.

I've seen them a bunch, in multiple contexts. Small club, big club, unconventional venues, as an opening act, headliner, on a mismatched bill, perfectly pair bill, Christmas show ... always great. I think the next show here is in a chapel.

my favorite show i've seen of theirs is when they did a 28 minute version 'do you know how to waltz' in front of 10,000 89.3-ass NPR The Current craft beer people. I immediately ran down to the front of stage in glee once I realized what was going on. people were infuriated

They *opened* their show the time I saw them in Portland, OR in 2007 or so ('Drums & Guns' tour) with a 20+ minute, wicked loud take on 'Do You Know How to Waltz,' and honestly played the whole show kind of angry. While I hope some day to see a lots-of-silence show in a church-type setting--it was kind of amazing to see them play that way.

i saw them once, at the metro sometime in the mid-2000s, and the crowd talked the entire time and i wanted to scream

Does anyone have information about the bonus track on the Japan edition - https://www.discogs.com/Low-Double-Negative/release/12528289 ?

I'm kinda hoping it's some epically lengthy track, given it's on a second CD.

my favorite show i've seen of theirs is when they did a 28 minute version 'do you know how to waltz' in front of 10,000 89.3-ass NPR The Current craft beer people. I immediately ran down to the front of stage in glee once I realized what was going on. people were infuriated

I love this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI5-MuV5NSo

oh hell yeah

i've never seen low live but i've always wanted to see the extended "waltz"

the crowd talked the entire time and i wanted to scream

The Low live experience in a nutshell.