Low + Jason Pegg – The Old Market, Brighton 03/12/11

This is a very special evening. It’s the end-of-C’mon-tour sign-off from the peerless Low, and it takes place in the same building where they recorded 2002′s genre-defining Trust. As if just seeing Low perform live isn’t privilege enough.

Tonight they’re preceded by Jason Pegg, former Clearlake-man and local support filler of convenience – and a man who deserves a more worthy billing.As when fronting his band, who remain on a frustrating and seemingly terminal hiatus, Pegg is a classic English pop songwriter, a man with a lyrical gift that’s never seen the audience it demands. His solo electric warm-up set doesn’t quite scale the heights of Clearlake’s illuminating live shows, but there’s only so much you can do with such restrictive arrangements, and it’s still unmistakably him – albeit a tad more mature and earnest, as we suppose befits the occasion.

It’s over to the main attraction then, and there’s suitable anticipation for a band truly at the peak of their powers, and one surely featuring in any informed appraisals of the very finest practising bands of the present day. Or of any given year in the last decade, actually.

The onstage chemistry – especially that between Alan Sparhawk and Mim Parker – is at that optimum level of spikiness and unpredictability; where it gives an extra edge and electrifying quality to their output, rather than being too far towards tantrum territory.

And Low have rarely sounded better than this. Dipping into their vast and as-good-as-dammit flawless archive to punctuate majestic opener ‘Nothing But Heart’ alongside ‘Especially Me’, ‘Majesty/Magic’ and other highlights from an album that only has highlights, they’ve also never sounded so defiantly individual.

Alan’s exchanges with the audience are as uncomfortable as they are typically wry, and Mimi’s one riposte to a would-be suitor is equally curt. As a brief aside, the only detractor is the staggering ignorance of a handful of audience members (and members they truly are). You’re watching a band? Shut the hell up then – and if there’s one band to whom this should apply more than any it’s Low, such is the fragility of their work. They are after all the band who famously prompted the Radio 1 jingle to kick in on John Peel’s show, due to perceived airwave inactivity. But we’ll be jiggered if anything’s going to intrude on this experience to any damaging degree – and Low make it relatively easy to ignore the rude sods, so wholly enveloping and captivating are they.

The main set flashes by, and they return with a nearly-topical ‘Just Like Christmas’, serving reminder that there’s no lapse in the quality of even their occasional indulgences, before they’re through and we’re awestruck. Spectacular, then. As expected, then.

Photo by Mark ‘Harry’ Harris