It’s tricky to work out who Low are trying to please anymore; maybe after nine full-lengths, they’re just sick of trying to impress anyone. Then again, when you think about it, who could blame them? Hardened fans of the band’s slow-burning enigmatic sound were left cold by 2005′s relatively poppy The Great Destroyer, while new fans won over must have been flummoxed by follow-up Drums and Guns, an album whose pseudo-industrial production occasionally bordered on the grotesque. From its title on down, new LP C’mon certainly seems to suggest a more welcoming, inclusive experience – is that drummer Mimi Parker’s sillouhette on the cover? Say hello, Mimi! – but this being a Low record, there’s still some glass left hidden in the grass.

Take opening track ‘Try to Sleep’; kicking off your first album in four years with a lullaby is, in itself, a bold move – all open tunings, subliminal background voices and gently-carressed glockenspiels, it’s enough to drive any listener to taking the title’s advice, were it not such a beautiful track. Yet, the lyrics warp the song into something far more sinister; “Try to sleep, don’t look at the camera…/ You try to sleep and you never wake up…c’mon, wake up…” Alan Sparhawk coos, as his blankly collected delivery leaves you with the strange task of working out why he’s filming you in the first place, and the uncomfortable notion that he may not want you to wake up at all. Meanwhile, the campfire strum of closer ‘Something’s Turning Over’ seems sweet enough, but once you hear the choir of children la-la-la-ing away behind Sparhawk’s notion that “Just because you never hear their voices, don’t mean they won’t kill you in your sleep” you can’t help but leave the record behind feeling somewhat disturbed.

Mimi gets a few more vocal turns than usual, with her two waltzes on side one coming as formidable early highlights; the gently jangling ‘You See Everything’ gets points for being one of the unlikeliest Smiths pastiches of recent times, while ‘Especially Me’ positively shimmers atop a metronomic drumbeat. Yet Sparhawk’s contributions, especially towards C’mon‘s middle section, tend to be almost too unmemorably spartan for their own good; yet, they sound so archetypally Low in their savage, austere beauty – a sensibility that few acts can pull off well – that it would be wrong to dismiss them as filler, but rather as a perverse way of working up towards the album’s real gem.

‘Nothing But Heart’ is suitably titled, taking three simple chords and four simple words and stretches them out into an eight-minute mantra. Its structure is pure Neil Young – verse, chorus, solo until the end of time – but even Neil has never quite allowed himself to sound this openly simplistic/optimistic. The track never quite explodes, but it doesn’t need to – the song simply envelopes you, as more and more guitars chug their way into the mix, with all-round axe-genius Nels Cline contributing his trademark flutters over the top. They’ve never quite done anything like it – at least not on this scale – and the effect is nothing but breathtaking.

All in all, C’mon certainly works as an easy entry point into the Low catalogue, charting the best of the band’s ups, downs, noises and lulls. It doesn’t quite hold its own with the magisterial Things We Lost in the Fire, but it sure gives it a run for its money. One thing’s for sure, though – their tenth album probably won’t be as inviting; best to C’mon while the invitation’s still valid…