Low: Classic or classic?

spellbinding in manchester cathedral the other night. the new songs sounded almost just like on record, sans distortion. steve doesn't get enough love, either. his playing on the last two records has been rock solid. the whole fifteen minutes of 'do you know how to waltz', medley'd into 'lazy'...!

seeing them soon in TO, v much looking forward to it. only seen them once before, on the TGD tour I believe?

Just occurred to me that the cover of Double Negative looks a lot like the youtube dead link placeholder.

Heads up...

Watch Low perform their 'Double Negative' tour live from the historic and majestic Fitzgerald Theater in downtown St. Paul, Minn. on November 2, 2018. The show is expected to begin around 9:00 p.m. CDT.

https://www.thecurrent.org/feature/2018/10/19/watch-low-live-in-concert-at-the-fitzgerald-theater-double-negative

Going to be there in person, very excited!

I hope some folks here watched. Terrific show!

several audio issues :(

This was far-and-away my favourite Low album on first listen and now it might be one of my favourite albums, period

Sounded great last night in Philly, even if I had to endure the odor of someone’s vomit through the entire show. I think they may have been at an all Frito-Lay buffet earlier in the evening?

Someone in the audience, umprompted, announced the Minnesota election results to them at the Toronto gig

They were fantastic in Boston a couple nights ago. They've developed an effect that seems to remove all initial attack and sustains/loops notes until new ones are played, and simultaneously give a jittery, digital-decomposition sound with some octave/chorus sounds, which they use on most of the 'Double Negative' tracks (and retroactively apply to some of the earlier songs) and I found it entrancing and really effective. In particular, parts from the record I would've assumed were guitar if not some non-string instrument turned out actually to be Steven's bass, played very high on the frets. Really beautiful. Overall I'd say it was the most impassioned I've ever seen them (saw them play aggressively and angrily on the 'Drums & Guns' tour, which was interesting, but lacked the tension and restraint and impact of how they're playing now). They seem to know their new work is among their best, almost seem proud of it--deservedly so.

otm

fgti if you have more thoughts about the album I think I speak for everyone when I say we'd all love to hear 'em

that vomiting was right by the chair i was standing on. when i saw them open for slowdive at union transfer a few years back, the lead singer of nothing puked in a garbage can right by me, too. i have that effect on people i guess

i'm nothing but heart

Perfect pairing of band and venue tonight, just utterly gorgeous on both counts. As Alan said, it was so pretty he didn't want to mess it up by saying anything. Looks like the setlists have been pretty similar this tour. They have a million songs but don't seem like the sort of group that can just pull something out.

Classic.

IDK how the other shows turned out, but hearing people flip out at the opening notes of "Do You Know..." was hilarious to me. Like, here comes the hit!

Also, a couple of the recent songs were almost funky/groovy live thanks to Steven

(sold out) crowd here was dead silent during each song.

Occurred to me that as moody as the band is I really have no idea what any of their songs are about.

simply, politics/existential anxiety/faith/hope. the material on double negative mostly concerns current political climate - theyve expressed that frustration fairly directly across other records (drums and guns). sure some of its cryptic. issues with the church of LDS too ('quorum'). they occasionally divulge in interviews - 'no comprende' was about alans/mimi's domesticity and endurance in their relationship. as for older stuff, 'starfire' is about their friend who had a pirate radio station... dunno!

Lots of Secret Name is about the LDS I believe.

Yeah Sparhawk's Mormonism coupled with his, um, quite un-Mormon lifestyle has always fascinated me

I guess I can see how “No Comprende” could be about their relationship but wow what a dark framing for it.

xxp oh, I have to listen again to really think about it, but the way that the songs are at the service of larger production theses is a big one, they found ways to subvert the blunt appeal of Mimi+Alan=pretty bedrock of their vocal approach while still keeping it as the bedrock. It's really a marvellous trick when a band/artist keeps the same thing that makes their music appealing but finds ways to obscure and withhold it, and make that appealing feature essentially more valuable as a result

I need to actually listen to the lyrics I guess, never a high point with this band in the past ime but I hope they're good

lol there is only one Low lyric (just a single line) that I really can't stand, and it happens to be in my favorite song -- "man in the box wants to burn my soul"

In Metal is about having a baby

xp some of the lyrics on the first LP are a little cringy - 'rope', 'fear'... but i return to it again and again many nights just for the atmosphere. i must have played 'down' a hundred times this year.

wonderful live set from the era here: https://archive.org/details/low1994-03-29.flac

"you can't trust violence" is one of the great economical phrases of rock tbh

Was nice to hear Lazy last night sort of float out of the noise of Waltz.

Speaking of which, "Lazy" sounds remarkably like Labradford, distantly presaging their switch to Kranky.

xpost "Words" - love that song as well ... curious why you find that "man in the box" line so bothersome?

it's "burn my soul" in particular, feels both very arch and quite vague. I assume the narrator is troubled by something he sees on TV but "burns my soul" just doesn't point anywhere to me

I always assumed it was a reference to a televangelist hectoring sinners with threats of eternal damnation.

that first album still sounds like faith / pornography - era cure to me

i'm enjoying this introspect! kramer's production, honestly. he had it down. those first two LPs, and Galaxie 500...

I hadn't listened to the first album in years, but this morning it sounded like it could have been released this year. Faith era Cure otm.

I always assumed it was a reference to a televangelist hectoring sinners with threats of eternal damnation.

― Tim F, Sunday, November 18, 2018 3:10 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is my interpretation as well. It's a US-specific reference so maybe it doesn't travel too well.

i've been thinking about "always up" ever since i saw it performed at the chicago show. i never appreciated its subdued power until hearing it in that church

I like the new record, I'm not quite as head over heels in love with it as a lot of folks seem, though I am sort of chalking it up to seeing it live and hearing the songs in that setting and kind of falling in love with them vs the record.

I hadn't see them play a regular non-noise/drone show in a long time & they were fantastic, one of the best shows I have ever seen, every song was like the best song ever played.

Secret Name & Things We Lost In the Fire are still my go to lps,

i am completely head over heels in love with it

i think it even leveled-up after the 200th listen

I've finally got hold of Double Negative, yes this is a good lp. I would like it even more if they could keep the style of the first four tracks going through the rest of it, but understand that it might try people's patience a bit.

This is the first Low album I've purchased in years, and it really holds up. The blown-out / distortion effects don't wear thin, as it's pared back nicely during some understated parts. It's well-nuanced, compared to something like Embryonic by The Flaming Lips

It sounds as if they're using really heavy compression. "Always Trying to Work it Out" is fascinating - it has the same kind of aggressive compression as a lot of dance music. Whenever the kick drum comes in the entire rest of the mix gets out of the way, but they've made the kick drum quiet so that it sounds as if distant artillery is going off. Or some infernal factory. The album sounds like a more experimental, gloomier Slowdive.

I've generally been sceptical of Low - no-one can be that anguished for that long, they came across as fakers - but Double Negative is subtler. The sound is much more in-your-face but the lyrics and general atmosphere are subtler.

no-one can be that anguished for that long

actually,

I've generally been sceptical of Low - no-one can be that anguished for that long, they came across as fakers

This is a really weird opinion

Always Trying To Work It Out is my favorite track on here, and that sidechain kick is definitely a big part of that. Don't know that I've really heard that before on a nominally non-electronic recording.

They used that effect on the last LP as well, notably on the opener "Gentle"

I've generally been sceptical of Low - no-one can be that anguished for that long, they came across as fakers

This is a really weird opinion

re the sidechain kicks:

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.

― Tim F, Tuesday, 11 September 2018 22:49 (three months ago) Permalink

Perhaps worth emphasising that the kick itself does not sound "loud" - almost like they wanted to concoct a heavily sidechained arrangement but then remove the most of the sound that the sidechaining is designed to emphasise, so it's as if the arrangements are being overwhelemed by silence or numbness, like you're going straight from sensation to a kind of post-explosion deafness, but skipping the sound of the explosion that put you there.

I can't think of a more allusive sonic trick in music this year.