(S)low core and minimalist pop

Low's music has no equal in the history of rock. Initially disciples of Codeine, Cowboy Junkies and slo-core in general, they later arrived at a personal style, minimal in sound and transcendental in mood. To say that Low make sad, depressed music is certainly true, but it's also reductive. On a semiotic level, Low's music fuses signifiers and meanings; voices, sounds, lyrics and concepts expressed come together to shape a compact sonic icon, one that finds its reference point in nature but its purpose in transcending it. The atmospheres created are dreamlike, belonging to distant worlds, possible only in dreams. Only Tim Buckley in the past, Roy Montgomery (Dadamah, Dissolve, Hash Jar Tempo) and Lycia in the Nineties have managed to compose music so intensely metaphysical. Low's sonic poetry flows languidly, capturing body and soul, enthralling and leaving one catatonic, hypnotizing the way only Jim Morrison knew how to.

The Low project took shape in 1994 in Duluth, Minnesota, with Alan Sparhawk (vocals and guitar), his wife Mimi Parker (drums and vocals) and bassist John Nichols (replaced by Zack Sally starting with Long Division) as its protagonists.

The Low EP contains some of the slowest compositions the band ever produced, immediately revealing a close kinship with Codeine. "Lazy" and "Words" would resurface on I Could Live In Hope, "Caroline" and "Below and Above" on Long Division.

Their debut album I Could Live In Hope is a stunning work, unusually mature for a band's first release. The sound is spare yet intense; it's truly remarkable how Low manage to build dreamlike soundscapes and atmospheres using the classic rock band set-up (guitar, bass, drums), delivering a stern lesson to the multitude of electronic musicians who in the Nineties bragged about producing ambient music. A bass line that's menacing yet subdued at the same time introduces the first "poem"; "Words" drags on for over 5 minutes, carried by a listless, Galaxie 500-style melody and Sparhawk's evocative voice, which, despite not being especially gifted, manages to lend the sonic flow considerable emotional weight. In "Fear", the joint, almost choral singing of Sparhawk and Parker builds a dreamy atmosphere reminiscent of Mazzy Star, which is then abruptly cut short, torn open by a chorus declaimed with the austerity of Swans. "Slide" is Mimi Parker's vocal masterpiece; her delicate, enveloping singing is capable of hypnotizing the listener, guiding them toward otherworldly destinations. Parker's vocal style is a striking cross between Tim Buckley and Hope Sandoval, Grace Slick and Margo Timmins; the result is a sort of ethereal whisper with the same evocative quality as the celestial cry of Elizabeth Fraser.

"Lullaby" is a sorrowful ballad of around ten minutes that starts off slowly but gradually picks up pace, not so much through the drums or bass as through the guitars, which seem to chase one another, tracing a melodic interplay reminiscent of "Picture Of You" (The Cure).

I Could Live In Hope is a wonderful album, one of those works that deserves credit for freeing rock from the stereotyped notion of adolescent, wild, violent music tied to primal instincts. If history ever judges rock as a major art form, records like this one will be part of the reason why.

On Long Division, the melodies still turn at a crawl, but the rhythm section is even less intrusive. The drums accompany rather than drive the rhythm; the sound is even more minimal, only seemingly static, but if anything even more ascetic. The music seems to evoke states of calm, but it's an illusory calm, underpinned by an evident tension.

"Violence" could be the ideal soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, for the moment right before the blast; it's astonishing how music this quiet can also be this weighty. The melody of "Caroline" still carries the ghost of Galaxie 500, but in terms of intensity, the track surpasses anything Wareham's band ever produced. "Shame" is another of the album's masterpieces, a long lament that materializes out of nowhere, with the instruments playing discreetly, never intrusive. "Swingin'" is a pop song complete with a chorus, and it anticipates what would later be fully developed on Things We Lost In The Fire.

The art of the Duluth trio aims to create atmospheres; what makes the difference is that these guys can also write songs. Low are built to last. I Could Live In Hope and Long Division are works of absolute value, and after just two albums Low already rank among rock's classics.

The Transmission EP contains a new version of "Caroline", and overall the sound doesn't stray far from what we heard on Long Division.

The Curtain Hits The Cast marks the start of a transitional phase that will lead the band toward a more pop-oriented language. Despite the length of some of the compositions, it's one of their more accessible albums, an excellent introductory guide for newcomers to the band. The sound is fuller, thickened by Steve Fisk's production. But it's still a Low album through and through, as the sorrowful "Anon" confirms. "Do You Know How To Waltz" is a sprawling, epic composition, one of the most atmospheric in their catalogue, while "Mom Says" is one of the bleakest. Low have fully reworked their influences; echoes of Codeine, Nick Drake and the elder Buckley have been distilled into a unique, recognisable style, by now independent of those models.

Songs For A Dead Pilot is an anomalous record. Low produced the album themselves, trying out new approaches (an even more rarefied sound), but the result is a cold experimentalism that exists for its own sake. "Born By The Wires" is a long 13-minute requiem dominated by Sparhawk's fragile falsetto; it's as if the band wanted to give a sound to silence. Along with the passionate "Will The Night", it's the only track on the record worth saving.

On Owl Remix Low, a series of electronic musicians take on Low's catalogue, producing remixed versions of some of the band's tracks.

In The Fishtank is an interesting collaboration with Dirty Three. Warren Ellis's violin lends more dynamism to Low's sound, and some of the compositions are genuinely enjoyable. Particularly notable is the cover of Neil Young's "Down By The River", as well as "When I Called Upon Your Seed".

Secret Name continues the path begun with The Curtain Hits The Cast. The sound is even fuller thanks to the addition of new instruments like piano and cello, but this comes at the expense of the atmospheres. On Secret Name, Low's art becomes more earthbound and less spiritual: more Neil Young than Tim Buckley.

Still, Secret Name is above all a transitional album, where pop begins to timidly peek through without yet taking on a fully formed shape. On this record the band's sound is flat, lacking personality; it has lost many of the qualities that had defined it in the past, and the new attitude isn't yet fully evident. Even so, it's still a Low album, and there's no shortage of good songs. "Starfire" and "Two Step" are the tracks that most recall the old style; they're compositions that drift in a sidereal void, searching for something to hold on to, something to lean against. "Soon" is the emblem of Secret Name's sound. It drags on for over five minutes for no apparent reason; the atmosphere isn't especially celestial, nor is the melody especially memorable. "Immune", on the other hand, is a delicate pop song that hints at a new maturity, and is in a sense the first track of Things We Lost In The Fire.

Secret Name should be taken for what it is: a preparatory album, the final stage before arriving at a new mode of expression. Yet the record was praised to excess, especially by that segment of critics who had missed the band's earlier masterpieces.

Christmas is a collection of covers and various rarities that adds nothing to Low's catalogue.

Bombscare is another split, this time with Spring Heel Jack. Low provide vocals and lyrics, Coxon and Wales the music.

Things We Lost In The Fire is the new masterpiece from the Duluth trio, the album that perfects the transformation begun with The Curtain Hits The Cast, where finally all the elements that had characterised Low's sonic universe across its various phases come together: slowness (in some compositions, no longer taken to such extremes), celestial atmospheres, sweet melodies and vocal intensity all converge into distinctly pop song structures. Low rediscover themselves as songwriters in the old-fashioned sense (and the sense still practiced today), complete with catchy choruses. It's hard to say whether the band set out to get here, but the fact remains that Low's luminous poetry has never been so direct. The opening "Sunflower" is the manifesto of this new direction: a driving drumbeat sets the pace, the guitar and the voices of Sparhawk and Parker trace out a rounded melody, and the piano bursts in halfway through, thickening the sound and giving the music an orchestral quality. "Dinosaur Act" and "July" are the most pop compositions on the record, and indeed in Low's entire career, everything engineered to deliver maximum intensity at the chorus.

There's no shortage, however, of songs in the band's classic, slowed-down style. "Embrace" is a masterpiece: Parker intones a prayer in Nico's chant-like style, the violin accompanies prominently up front, and the road to paradise has never felt so short.

"Like A Forest" is emotional violence in its purest form; the beauty of the melody is enriched by orchestral arrangements and a Dirty Three-style violin that lends the track even more dynamism. The surreal folk of "In Metal" closes the album in fitting fashion.

Trust (2002) hits the mark again. Low could keep remaking themselves endlessly without ever growing tiresome, and indeed the new record also introduces some significant novelties. First of all, there are at least a couple of power ballads, such as "Canada" and "Last Snowstorm Of The Year", which are the closest thing to straight-up rock the band has ever produced. On "Canada", the hypnotic percussiveness of the Velvet Underground blends with the power folk of the Byrds; what emerges sounds something like Swell. The second novelty is that Trust is Low's darkest, most depressed album. "(That's How You Sing) Amazing Grace" and "John Prine" are nightmares running over 7 minutes, and especially in the latter the ghost of Swans looms large. "In The Drugs" is a folk ballad that harks back to the previous album, while "Tonight" takes the prize for the most celestial atmosphere. The album's masterpiece is perhaps the poignant "Point Of Disgust", in which a superb vocal melody and piano arrangement are "disturbed" by the sound of rain. Autumn has never sounded so leaden.

Alan Sparhawk would also make a significant contribution to the albums of Jessica Bailiff, the finest disciple of the Low-sound. The sound of the Minnesota trio is the sound of man ascending to pure spirit, of a feather drifting in the wind, of dawn and dusk at once: it's the sound of infinity. Low have left an indelible mark on the history of rock.

With The Great Destroyer (2005) the band ventures into primarily pop-oriented compositions, relying heavily on distortion and melody. It's true that the sound loses a bit of its distinctiveness, but it's equally true that the songs feel more fully realized than ever, the melodies more legible — arguably the most immediate album of the band's career.

Is The Great Destroyer treading the same ground as Things We Lost In The Fire? On the surface, yes, but listening closely reveals that the underlying premises are different, if not opposite, even as the end result is similar. On Things We Lost In The Fire, the dilations were caged within the structure of the song form while retaining the psychedelic touch, the transcendent intensity and the poetic spirit of the early years. On The Great Destroyer, Low turn out songs that could have been written by the Rolling Stones or U2. Rock songs ("hard and pure") at the highest level, blessed with hooks, and, as far as possible, even faster-paced. It's the method that has changed.

The opening "Monkey" is the litmus test, a Young-like nightmare trapped in obsessive, Velvet-branded noise. The distortion pedal is still cranked up on "California" and "Everybody's Song", while on the splendid "Cue To String" and "Pissing" the intensity of the band's earliest days resurfaces. "Just Stand Back" and "Step", finally, are pop in its purest form.

Drums And Guns (2007), rather than chasing ghosts and haunted tribal rhythms, tells murderous stories that blend innocence and bitterness, aiming, as ever, at the firmament. That some guys hide their six-strings away hardly matters; that this particular band does so, having branded indelible pages of music history with the depth of its arpeggios — well, that's something far bigger. The experiment furthest removed from the band's roots is "Belarus": a sweet, pleasant duet traced out by bass, electronic drums, a single piano note, vocal loops and gusts of chamber violins. A caress. Emotionally, the flip side of the coin is well represented by "Murderer". Brushed drums and treated guitar form the backdrop to a touching, introverted melody; the vocal swells with grandeur before fading away meekly.

The problem with the record is that many tracks tend to glide by too smoothly, especially in the central stretch, when the tones turn darker. A case in point is "Take Your Time", with its tolling bells, electro pulse and funereal piano notes. What seems to be missing is real depth of impact: the class is still there, but there are few gut-punches. While the touching "Dragonfly" and the delicate "Always Fade" manage to shine pleasantly, the true gem is "Breaker". A wonderfully successful blend of electronics, handclaps and organ, with Sparhawk joining in gorgeously, wringing out his guitar for about a minute and a half. Setting aside the less rewarding tracks, there's only one curiosity left to mention: the divertissement "Hatchet", with its invitation delivered in bass strums ("Let's bury the hatchet, like the Beatles and the Stones").

C'mon arrives a full four years after Drums And Guns, at the tail end of a period in which Alan Sparhawk devoted himself to the parallel, vintage-rock-leaning project Retribution Gospel Choir.

If the previous record had marked a significant turn away from Low's canonical sound, C'mon brings the Duluth band back to a more "classic" register, one that connects fairly explicitly to the glories of Things We Lost In The Fire and Trust. Where Drums And Guns cast a dark, apocalyptic eye on the fate of a fragile, disoriented humanity, the new songs trace a retreat into the private sphere, into affection and the most genuine feelings. Recorded at Sacred Heart Studio in Duluth (housed in a deconsecrated church), where Trust was also born, the ten songs on C'mon come across as suspended in some alien dimension of time, where hazy, slow-motion caresses and heartfelt elegies — shaped from pared-down rock idioms and from melodies as ethereal as they are fully realized — once again meet. With C'mon, Low sound like a band at peace, whose anxieties have gradually given way to the grace and tenderness of more intimate, everyday feelings that nonetheless never weaken or trivialize the evocative power of their music.

Long aware of possessing a paradigmatic sound, they no longer have any qualms about contaminating their music: they did it with the indie-rock hybridization of The Great Destroyer, with the electronic "grime" of Drums And Guns, and they don't hold back on C'mon either. This time, though, they choose to record and play an album in which the "Low" sound marries the most classic of American genres: the folk-rock that, in Sparhawk's own words, is the true voice of the people. C'mon is, in a sense, the album that definitively confirms Low as a folk band, a traditional-music outfit reinterpreting the great American tradition in light of the maelstrom that has long muddied and endangered its waters. And seen from this angle, even the extraordinary ballads scattered across their previous work — from the re-take of "Sunshine" off the debut album, to "(That's How You Sing) Amazing Grace", by way of "In Metal" and "Lion/Lamb" — can be gently drawn back into the fold of "classicism", understood as an ongoing exploration of the human soul through musical expression. It's the almost pop-leaning opening of "Try To Sleep" and the joyous closer "Something's Turning Over" — with the couple's very young children Hollis and Cyrus joining in on backing vocals — that show how Alan and Mimi have in some way exorcised their own ghosts (which probably weighed most heavily on the former). But once again, it's where the singing turns more fervent and the music more intense that the album's emotional charge truly takes flight: the aching simplicity of "$20", the gentle, vivid "Nightingale", in which the voices of America's most in-tune married couple caress and entwine one another, paving the way for the passionate, repetitive and cathartic embrace of "Nothing But Heart", or the relentless drive of "Majesty/Magic" — these are the high points of a solid, engrossing work. No frills, then, and few concessions to experimentation or disguise: just a bare, sincere and deeply communicative band.

Having abandoned the self-production route they'd taken, however happily, on the previous C'mon, for The Invisible Way (2013) Low decided to bring in a certain Jeff Tweedy to man the mixing desk, who responded by hosting the slowcore giants in the ideal setting (Wilco's Loft in Chicago) to write yet another memorable chapter of their story.

A story that, with this very album, celebrates its twentieth anniversary, yet still has blank pages left to fill — in this case by picking up the folk-rock threads where the previous album had left off and digging even deeper into the heart of the American tradition. From the very first notes of "Plastic Cup", it's clear that the invisible path of the title is also the one leading the two Minnesota musicians to set their world of bare, evanescent ballads against the most classic singer-songwriter tradition of the loner, rooted in those same geographic coordinates (who said "Zimmerman"?). The piano and acoustic guitar ("a '40s Martin", Alan Sparhawk is keen to point out), the absolute protagonists of "The Invisible Way"'s sound, seem to play themselves, such is the ease with which they carry the transcendental harmonies sung by husband and wife. The rest, of course, is down to the songs. "We always aim for conciseness and strip away anything a song doesn't need", Sparhawk has said. And it's precisely this art of subtraction that produces two gems of immeasurable beauty: a classic Low-song called "Amethyst", where every chord change grips the heart like a vice, and the austere, soul-steeped ballad "Clarence White", embellished in its fills by a minimalism/eccentricity dichotomy that smacks of Wilco.

The remaining compositions keep pace just as masterfully, expressing a musical power that manifests itself in absence — whether that of the arid landscapes over which Parker alone intones the prayer "Holy Ghost", or that of the empty spaces filled by desert-like phrasing and seductive Sixties harmonies on "Four Score". The sense of perpetual suspension, that collection of gestures that suggest without ever fully resolving — always essential components of the band's poetics — give off here such an aura of seduction that it wins out even over the album's very few stumbles (the long coda that tears open the bucolic picture of "On My Own", a "Mother" that proceeds without hitches or particular jolts), and further enhance the fleeting serenity of the rare excursions into pop-song territory on "So Blue" and "Just Make It Stop". In its precarious balance between the cosmic pull of the voices and the sinister delicacy of the sounds, Low's new effort demands repeated listens before it reveals its essence. By the end of the journey, though, that "Invisible Way" will appear more tangible than ever, naturally linking the band's distinctive choices to an ever more mature gaze toward the roots of their own sound.

With Ones And Sixes (2015), electronics return to Low's world, but this time through the front door, without undermining the band's enduringly spartan, naive charm. Icy, harsh, rigid and at times desolate, the new album holds more than one reason to stand on its own merits, beyond the band's fame and history. The opening notes of "Gentle" reopen the door to doubt and unease, with drum machines and digital glitches haunting the piano notes and vocals in a linguistic update of slowcore that abandons the vintage and plunges into the present. The sharp, metallic tone of the post-rock on "No Comprende" is one of the album's high points, as well as one of the key junctures from which to fully grasp the less comforting, more fragile ecstasy of this new chapter in the band's story — though it takes "The Innocents" to be truly overwhelmed by this new aesthetic of pain, amid rhythmic and electronic distortions rippling over syncopated bass and guitar chords, while the vocal duet reaches an almost angelic perfection. "No End", "Kid In The Corner" and "What Part Of Me" stir things up, bringing in a warmer, more melodic breeze that partly eases the tension and opens the door to possible accusations of pandering, especially given the overwhelming refrain of "What Part Of Me", the poppiest song the band has ever written.

What makes Ones And Sixes interesting is a palpable curiosity that, in recent chapters, had seemed tamed by grandiose production and comfortable sonics. "Spanish Translation", for instance, is the band's classic slow-motion track, pure slowcore destined for acoustic hypnosis — were it not for Sparhawk breaking the rules with a vocal performance that duels with jagged bursts of electric guitar, keeping both tension and attention high. Conversely, "Congregation" revels in drum machines and darkness with a powerful, incisive drive, where doubt wins out over certainty and reinvigorates a sonic path that had seemed to get stuck in comfortable territory — territory that resurfaces pleasantly on "DJ", with one of the most intense lyrics on the record, which also justifies its placement as closer. Fans will settle without hesitation into the welcoming arms of "Into You" and, of course, the nostalgic "Lies", but the more demanding listeners will only surrender once the nearly 10 minutes of "Landslide" sweep them up like a tornado — a track where everything comes crashing down with the force of an avalanche and the delicacy of a snowstorm, and also the chapter where Low's new sonic face is most evident, as guitars, drums and voices sustain the emotional and lyrical crescendo in place of an orchestra or a more epic sound. A refined example of artistic longevity and constant renewal, Ones And Sixes sounds thrilling, bold, abrasive, but also full of promise for the future.

Electronics are instead used in diametrically opposite fashion on Double Negative (2018), where the synthetic sounds serve not to enrich but to destroy. With BJ Burton confirmed at the controls, he's given free rein and a single, sadomasochistic instruction: hit hard enough to hurt. What fills the horizon, then, is a different electronic imaginary altogether, dark and nihilistic: dubstep, glitch, post-club music, industrial, with a few drops of trip hop just to dilute a compound so lethal it risks detonating ahead of schedule. The sensation is alienating and anything but pleasant: it's as if a psychopath in the grip of an uncontrollable breakdown had started remixing one of the band's old albums, perhaps using malfunctioning equipment. It's the flip side of the gleaming accelerationist dream, a catastrophic vision that pushes technology to the point of collapsing in on itself, a scream so piercing it chokes on itself.

The “double negative” of the title should therefore be read not only as a horror to be confronted here and now, but also in the sense of a photographic negative, a dimensional inversion that reverses the colours and reveals what has been repressed. What Low enact is an almost Christlike sacrifice, drawing Evil onto themselves in order to drag it down into their own disappearance, agreeing to be devoured in order to free the world from an unbearable, unmotivated suffering. There's no easy millenarian temptation here, though: only a great deal of helpless, deeply human pain. In a scene from “You May Need A Murderer”, an unmissable 2007 documentary in which the Sparhawks lay their own ghosts bare, Alan says something like “how am I supposed to act if my God asks me to do harm?”. Unable to resolve such an agonising question, Double Negative at least tries to vent that torment in a cathartic clean slate, a potlatch in which they hurl away what they hold most dear just to watch it burn.

The slowcore of their early years, the folk-rock of their maturity and the avant-pop of their adulthood are nothing but faded memories in the mind of a dying suicide, and Double Negative is exactly that: an artistic harakiri, their most extreme record and one of the most devastating works of recent years.

With Double Negative, Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker undoubtedly pushed sonic abstraction to levels never reached before, drawing on the grunge revolution and the sonic sedition of My Bloody Valentine, and, armed with an unparalleled harmonic language, came close to that notion of immortality which contemporary rock music has long seemed to lack.

With HEY WHAT (2021), however, comes an unexpected call back to reality: Low no longer dwell on light and shadow or chromatic shifts, the shades of grey are done away with, leaving room for empty surfaces painted in blood and ice, or for raven-black vapours and smoke-white mist. That notion of evil and suffering which on Double Negative was rendered through a disturbing, catastrophic sonic terrorism now seems partly tamed by the emotional intensity of tracks like “Don't Walk Away”. But the space granted to the voices of Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker conceals dark, impenetrable zones: a long history of struggles with depression that the two musicians try to finally exorcise on the monolithic, powerful “The Price You Pay (It Must Be Wearing Off)”, which not only renews the organic synthesis of distorted guitars and dissonant electronics, but also adds to the band's catalogue one of the most intense pages of their career.

In truth, there are many chapters of HEY WHAT destined to leave an indelible mark, starting with the opener “White Horses”, a triumph of unsettling sounds and electronic manipulations that blur the perception of sound, now more organic, now almost robotic, in a post-Kraftwerkian reinvention of an electronic beat that turns into noise, sound, screech, hiss, and then becomes the throbbing body of the anguished “I Can Wait”.

Rather than lingering on experimentation, Low hint at euphony and cacophony alike, with lush, melancholy textures that gradually lose any natural physical placement (“All Night”) or that explode into a lyrical, harmonic roar which once again unsettles that apparent calm invoked by the vocals and disrupted by the sound (“Days Like These”). Even the seemingly incidental, brief pieces play a fundamental role, whether it's an electronic puff of smoke (“There's A Comma After Still”) or the rock/noise regurgitation of the furious, dazzling “More” — it hardly matters: the two musicians move through short spaces with the same depth and skill they bring to the longer, more exhausting ones. At the two extremes of this expressive dichotomy lie, on one side, the icy chasm of distorted sounds of “Disappearing”, and on the other, the nearly eight minutes of “Hey”, yet another short-circuit from a band that has had the courage to look beyond.

If Double Negative cast doubt on our certainties, HEY WHAT fully restores them, handing us a genuine landmark of contemporary music.

Sadly, though, a terrible fate was lying in wait: Mimi Parker fell ill with cancer. After a hard-fought battle, on 6 November 2022 came the sad message from Alan Sparhawk, her lifelong partner: Mimi died last night, at home, surrounded by the love of her family: “Keep her name close and sacred”, Sparhawk asked of everyone. And there's no doubt that those who loved Low will keep on doing so forever.

Contributions by Francesco Nunziata (“The Great Destroyer”), Ciro Frattini (“Drums And Guns”), Francesco Amoroso (“C'mon”), Andrea D'Addato (“The Invisible Way”), Gianfranco Marmoro (“Ones And Sixes”, “HEYWHAT”), Ossydiana Speri (“Double Negative”)

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