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Low review – a hotline to paranoia, discomfort and sorrow

Tramway, Glasgow
The Minnesotan trio blend their recent electronic experimentation into their brutally beautiful aesthetic, offsetting despair with sweetness

It has been hailed by some critics as the masterpiece of Low’s 26-year career, yet 2018’s Double Negative ought to present the Duluth, Minnesota slowcore indie-rock lifers with a dilemma. How will they recreate the sound of their most adventurous record to date – a product of studio-as-instrument experimentation, a harshly textural triumph constructed with dolorous drones, raw static hiss, ragged noise and swirling electronic bass whomps – live in concert?

Unfazed guitarist and vocalist Alan Sparhawk, his drummer and vocalist wife Mimi Parker and bassist Steve Garrington render opener Always Up – the cautiously optimistic centerpiece of Double Negative – with a tender clinch of softly beaten toms, crunching distortion and harmonies so close it’s as if they’re fastened with Velcro. Low have never been a band likely to break out synths, drum pads and sequencers all of a sudden. They blend Double Negative in among their wider oeuvre and aesthetic, performing selections from their previous 11 albums under its brutally beautiful spell. Played out before a seated, pin-drop silent audience in the shadows of a theatre that is scarcely lit, this is a set shrouded in atmosphere. Low get lower.

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from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2sXnxqo
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