Duluth, Minnesota trio Low’s name so perfectly describes their sound it’s almost onomatopoeic and if they didn’t actually invent “slo-core,” they’re certainly its most venerable exponents. Their trademark is glacially slow, physically insistent pacing, coupled with a gorgeous mournfulness of both guitar and vocal tones that’s felt as a deliciously suffused sweetness. At least, that’s been the deal until now
Given Low’s reputation as crafters of the best funeral music around, their latest album “The Great Destroyer” is startlingly visceral, full of abrasive guitar runs, gristly riffs and bursts of ferocious feedback. After a decade of quiet contemplation, Low have apparently decided to kick out the jams. It’s a sea change that becomes them brilliantly.
Tonight’s set mixes a good chunk of the new LP with much-loved Low classics, plus the as yet unrecorded (and dryly humorous) “Dragonfly”. They open with “(That’s How You Sing) Amazing Grace”, which sets the hallmark, sepulchral tone, Alan Sparhawk’s tremelo-heavy guitar notes not so much shimmering as burning – and marking him out as a fan of Morricone. The lusciously lugubrious “Laser Beam” – sung in the exquisitely husky, country-edged tones of drumming angel Mimi Parker – also plays to type, but then comes "Monkey", on which Parker uses beaters to drum up a tempest while serrated, blues-soaked guitar notes wreak damage and the chorus, “tonight you will be mine, tonight the monkey dies” hangs heavy with implied horror.
“Everybody’s Song” is even more striking, a filthy and gnarled, heads-down stormer that sees Sparhawk hammering away with extraordinary ferocity, even pausing to chew at his strings and mumble lyrics into his scratch plate, rather than using an effects pedal. The ravaged glory of “Pissing", too, suggests the electrifying fervour of 16 Horsepower and is all the more striking when followed by the lowering “Silver Rider”, whose hymnal, pop beauty suggests a troubled Mamas & Papas.
It’s a perfectly pitched play of contrasts – deepest shadow and stark white light, sweetness and savagery, seduction and alienation, slo-mo and full-tilt, despair and hopefulness – and it passes in a flash. Whooping calls and foot-stamping for an encore are rewarded with the Carpenters-toned “Cue The Strings” and a stark, terrifyingly intense “I Remember”, but their final farewell is the much loved “Sunflower”, whose lyrics (“when they found your body, giant ‘x’-es on your eyes”) provide an unsettling counter to the tune’s euphoric sweetness.
It’s the quiet ones you have to watch. Isn’t that what they say?
