Sometimes I will wake in the night with a warm, meandering bassline roaming through my consciousness, soon to be joined by a brushed rhythm and spare electric guitar melody—and when the voice kicks in I realize my brain is playing “Down” back to me, a song I didn’t think much of at first but now haunts me completely. Like “Down,” almost all the other tracks on Low’s debut album I Could Live in Hope (1994) are quiet, slow, and utterly chilling. They can worm their way into the darkest crevices of your mind and take root.
Somebody somewhere at some point in time decided to call Low’s style of music “slowcore,” one of those cute subgenre names that make me want to dunk my head in a bucket of manure, and it seems to have stuck (the genre name, not my head). I hadn’t heard the term until a few years ago, in fact, although it seems to have been used since the early ‘90s. But several acts I love—and some others that bore me to tears—seem to fall into the category.
With almost all slowcore artists, some of their songs absolutely captivate me, whereas the songs that fail to tug at just the right nerve provoke more yawns than chills. Low is one of the key originators of the slowcore movement, and they exhibit its strengths and flaws to a T. Their hushed, minimal pieces aim for a spare beauty, a haunting, melancholy, existential anguish that touches you to the core. And when these songs work, they are brilliant. And when they don’t click with you, they fade into the background to be forgotten.
I found almost all of I Could Live in Hope thoroughly spellbinding. I’m not sure a subdued album has ever held my attention so thoroughly and compulsively. The more I listen to it, the more I want to keep it playing. It changes my mental space.
Their next two albums, despite sounding quite similar, I found mostly dull as dirt. When I sit and listen to the albums carefully, I can’t quite put my finger on why one song clicks with me and others don’t. But it’s the case. This slowcore stuff is pretty hit-or-miss. I assume that the songs that click will be different for each listener.
Low keeps things fresh partly by its use of two singers of quite different character. The husband-and-wife duo of Alan Sparhawk (also on guitar) and Mimi Parker (equipped with a minimal drum kit) trades songs back and forth across each album. Sparhawk’s voice is decent enough; Parker’s voice, on the other hand, is arrestingly beautiful. I tend to find Sparhawk’s songs to be the best and worst of each album; he can evoke a vaguely unsettling emptiness on his most effective tracks but he’s more likely to lose my interest. On the other hand, it’s hard not to like the songs Parker sings. Yet her voice might be just a bit too pure to evoke the desperation Low hopes to achieve in their best work. It’s hard to show the cracks in one’s psychological armor with a flawless sound. Sparhawk’s and Parker’s interplay has become richer as the band has grown, with their harmonies coming to dominate the sound.
Playlist 1
I Could Live in Hope was a landmark debut. To my ears, their next couple albums sounded about the same, only were far less captivating. Almost nothing on them grabbed me that way I Could Live in Hope had. Playlist One focuses on that album, with a few tracks from Long Division (1995) tossed in.
Playlist 2
Low came to prominence with two albums produced by Steve Albini, Secret Name (1999) and Things We Lost in the Fire (2001). The latter album was the critical breakthrough, but (as is often the case) the earlier album was the artistic one. Secret Name was my first Low album, in fact. A roommate of mine recommended it to me and lent me the disc. Within weeks, I owned my own copy, plus their debut and sophomore release, and I’d listened a good amount to their third album, which he also had. I still think it’s better than the more well-known Things We Lost in the Fire, but both are worth the listen. They are less spare, more edgy and abrasive than their previous work (still quite tame by Albini standards), but also with moments of greater beauty. Playlist Two collects some of the best tracks from each.
Playlist 3
Later years saw Low trying to explore different musical directions. They cranked up the guitars for The Great Destroyer (2005), which expanded their sound into alt-rock territory (without contributing much of anything to music in general). For other releases, they’ve branched out into the realm of electronic music, and here they have scored at least one unequivocal masterstroke, Double Negative (2018), whose eerie electronic dissonance was anticipated somewhat by Ones and Sixes (2015) and, to my ears at least, elements of some tracks on Drums and Guns (2007). Playlist Three features most of Double Negative, with some of Drums and Guns, too.
Mimi Parker died of ovarian cancer in 2022. RIP.
Cover Art:
- I Could Live in Hope (cover) and Secret Name (inner sleeve): Source, Discogs.com, Fair use.
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