Low: Classic or classic?

This band.

I've been steadily listening through their albums since last year, and would def participate in an artist poll now. I've mostly been listening to the newer stuff since a lot of the older stuff isn't on Spotify, but they have the debut, which has some great music. Overall though, I think I prefer the energy of Great Destroyer and after. C'mon is incredible especially

A bit surprising that Things We Lost is the only album of theirs I haven't liked all that much, not sure why. But I find it a bit hard to explain why I love this band so much to begin with!

I tend to think Things We Lost is the least good album pre-Great Destroyer, but I also think that Great Destroyer and everything that came after is of less good quality across the board. Early Low is incredible, each album amazing.

Whereas there are superfluous tracks on each album after and including The Great Destroyer. There are even superfluous albums, imho— despite two good songs, The Invisible Way is almost entirely embarrassing.

My own post confused me: I like everything pre-TGD, but thing TWLITF is the least good, while still being really amazing. Everything after that is more spotty to me.

'Double Negative' may be the best record ever made 25 years into a group's continuous career. They were clearly rejuvinated by it, after their first couple 'merely OK' albums.

I've been mostly listening to live shows on archive.org (LowMusic) to be honest. Looking for the longest/slowest version of Lullaby etc (14 minutes?)

Low might be the unusual band with 3 relatively distinct phases each of which has their ILX stans. "Relatively" since one could also see their discography as a continuum with I Could Live in Hope at one end and Double Negative at the other. FWIW I love the stretch between Secret Name and Guns & Drums.

^including both Secret Name and Guns & Drums...

I think Ones and Sixes is a really great album that somewhat understandably now gets overshadowed by its successor.

I kind of think for Low what we think of as 'merely okay' might be their way of experimenting or trying something different. If all of your albums are interesting or adventurous, then relatively conventional becomes your own version of adventurous.

Arggh, stupid, I should say all the way back to I Could Live in Hope, what was I thinking?

I kind of fit in with table's take - thought TWILITF was kind of weak when it came out but they peaked again with Trust. Then I felt TGD wasn't all it could have been, basically because of the inferior version of Silver Rider (a trick they pulled again with the inferior version of Murderer on D&G) and I just sort of lost interest. Saw them touring C'Mon in a room full of people who talked through every moment that wasn't loud and I guess I just lost interest.

Watched the Glastonbury set for Double Negative and it was great though, maybe because of DYKHTW.

I also always forget that TWLITF came before Trust....but basically, The Great Destroyer just put me off them for five or six years. I still don't like that album very much!

At the same time, The Great Destroyer has "Silver Rider," one of their all time prettiest songs.

That's the one I meant, the version on the Murderer ep was far superior imo

Which I see I said. Put down the keyboard aldo

Hmm, I think I prefer the album version. They're both great, though, and pretty distinct.

They uploaded this for the annual Duluth Kamikaze festival:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5ug9-alFfQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxFy-7DywdE

The Lice Song is still my favourite oddity, I got it originally a tape via the Low List of some mid-afternoon set at an outdoor thing Secret Name era.

! I had never heard that, thanks :-)

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/low/1999/loring-park-minneapolis-mn-33ee14cd.html

http://www.trustlow.com/archive/photos/990802.php

Found the show listing. Low also have some photos of it.

My favorite Low oddity is their cover of Soul Coughing's "Blue Eyed Devil," which I find just perfect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FHBxseoXvc

the great destroyer is great imo but i have a more even view of low’s discog. agreed the invisible way is a misstep, but the only one

i just love the guitar sounds on the great destroyer and the way it makes every song feel like it’s going to end your world with melody

Things We Lost in the Fire is absolutely classic wtf

I came around more TGD after taking some time away from the band, but because I so disliked it on my first listens when it was first released, there's a residue that I haven't been able to shake.

I think it's because the sound is so much fuller— what I had previously enjoyed most about Low was the way they played with juxtapositions of these more spare songs with relatively spare production with more maximal, overwhelming sounds, so that a very spare, gorgeous album like Curtain ends with this absolutely crushing wall of ambient noise. TGD was, to me, Low's entry into more typical "rock" songwriting with the more maximal production to match, and it felt like a betrayal at the time it was released. I still enjoy the earlier entries in Low's catalog more than TGD and those that came after, but I think they're all pretty genius records at this point, with The Invisible Way being ever the exception.

UMS, just for the record, I do love TWLITF, I just don't think it's as good as some of the earlier records. I don't really understand how anyone can not think Curtain is the best Low album, tbph

^^^^^ this

From memory, I recall dinosaur act being the first time I thought they sounded like a more conventional rock band, in the best way.

Curtain is great. Honestly I don't think there's a Low album I consider less than Good+ probably, most VG+ to Mint imo

For me, TWLITF is the perfect mid ground between the early stuff and the later stuff, feels like a "hinge" album to me

Though I don't know it depends on which one I'm listening to

great band, best Minnesota band of all time

But that was a blip on a record that included songs like Whitetail and Like a Forest. TGD was the first record where nearly all the songs sounded more like "rock" songs.

I feel all over the place with them.

Favorite album: I Could Live In Hope
Favorite song: California
Honorary Mention (aka album I love a whole ton that everyone forgot or does not like as much as I do): C'mon

C'mon is really high in my rankings, as is "California"!

Feel like Secret Name is slept on

Agreed. For me it's:

Curtain>Secret Name>I Could Live in Hope>Trust>Songs for a Dead Pilot>Things We Lost, at least for the early records. I'd need to go back and listen to some of the newer stuff again, because at a certain point, there are songs that get mixed up for me. For example, I always think that Whitetail is on Curtain, when it's really the best song from TWLITF.

i got into them around the time ‘secret name’ came out, loved all the albums before that, but then i couldn’t really cotton onto ‘trust’ and kinda stopped caring about them until ‘c’mon’ came out, and then i sorta left them alone again until ‘double negative’ which jolted me in such a way that i immediately proceeded to fill in all the gaps in my listening. (ftr i like ‘trust’ now, i think it just wasn’t the kind of thing i wanted to listen to at the time. i like all their albums to varying extents, tho ‘invisible way’ is somewhat leaden, agreed.)

Short answer, I start a new job at the beginning February so time is pretty much against me now. Happy for anyone else to take over.

Trust is still my overall fave, though Double Negative gives it a strong challenge

Trust was the first album I got, and I saw them on that tour, and it holds a special place for me. I remember bicycling around the cornfields near my college town, blasting "Amazing Grace" on repeat. That track has healing powers.

I know it pops up on threads all the time, but they are definitely in the running for largest catalog with fewest if any clunkers.

certainly no album I would remotely call bad

eeeeehhhhhh..... I mean, I like "Plastic Cup" and "So Blue" and "Just Make it Stop," but The Invisible Way is pretty unlistenable to me. The songs themselves when played live really work, but Tweedy's production gives me the heebie-jeebies.

oh yeah I don’t get Soul Coughing at all but that cover of “Blue Eyed Devil” is fantastic.

Otherwise, agreed.

(xpost yes! and the original is...really difficult to listen to lol)

Feel like I never checked out that album but it's hard to imagine it being that bad as apposed to just forgettable at worst.

Let's just say that the highlight when I saw them that year was when they did the Rihanna cover.

There just aren't many notable songs, seems rote and uninspired, which I don't feel about any of their other records.

gotcha

"Holy Ghost" is the one that stands out to me from TIW but I agree Tweedy's production is the pits

I think for a Low album to really sing it has to adopt an extreme of some kind (extreme reverb, hard panning, super specific sonic palate, blown out distortion, etc) and Tweedy seems to go out of his way to not do that