It must be interesting times in the Low studio. Seemingly content to ponder and drift through the acoustic and laid back environment that they’d created, suddenly it sounds as though they’ve woken from their slumber. It all began with 2005’s The Great Destroyer which added further sonic embellishments to their sparse sound, the songs more up tempo and with David Fridmann on board as producer he pulled them out of their shells, eked out new sounds and directions for them to explore. The recruitment of Matt Livingston on bass for Drums and Guns only seems to have distorted their sound further. This album is undeniably Low, but Low in a new world, a new development of themselves.

Songs like Dragonfly and Breaker hum and buzz with guitar feedback and echoing drums, their sparse arrangements have been augmented with this additional flare. But it doesn’t feel like pointless flare, their songs now have an added power, whilst their earlier albums were nice, their new found voice is much more in tune with our times, echoing the feel of paranoia and fear that seems to permeate our culture now. Belarus is a beautiful song full of vocal harmonies and delicately played percussion bringing to mind fields full of flowers and wildlife, the lyrics sung in voices that float over the music. Then there’s the jittering and clicking Always Fade which could almost be described as funky with it’s clipped bass line and sparkling percussion, the vocals just coming from the right speaker, the left just echoing some ghostly feedback. Hatchet seems like a comic interlude with it’s chorus of “Let’s bury the hatchet like the Beatles and the Stones”, comparing a relationship breakdown to the duel between the biggest bands in the world during the 60’s. It’s an oddity that just about works. As the album draws to a close, the feeling of desperation and paranoia seems to grow. The menacing Murderer hums and flutters through a haze of gentle feedback, the sinister lyrics offering services if you need “someone to do your dirty work”. The closing track Violent Past just broods. It’s charged organ chords and hazy production sounds as black as night, the vocals barely rising above it.

What we have here is an album that cries out to be heard. A comment on culture and the world in 2007, it’s the sound of a band that’s no longer afraid of being different, a band who want to challenge our perceptions of not just the world we live in, but what we think about them as well. Low can’t be brushed under the carpet quietly anymore, they’re fighting back and now you can easily hear them above everyone else.
85%

Links:
Low [official site] [myspace]