Press and Radio
Artist Low
Title Drums And Guns
Label Sub Pop
Rock Feedback
By Tom Hannan
Published: 5 April 2007
Youıve got to love a record that starts by announcing that you and
everyone else is going to die. And Drums and Guns, tellingly, rarely
gets lighter than that from beginning to end.
Sonically, itıs a huge, at first disarming, departure. It's possible Low
frontman Alan Sparhawk overdosed on guitars with his solely instrumental
last solo album (called, erm, Solo Guitar), as, unusually for a band
so renowned for their charming use of a chiming axe, there are next to
no six strings on Drums and Guns at all. Where guitars are used,
they're rarely playing chord patterns or riffs, just ringing curiously
or finding themselves being looped in to abrasive sound collages.
Peculiarly, almost all the vocals are panned hard to the right, making
for a unique headphones experience, albeit one that takes some real
getting used to.
Take "Belarus." I don't think there's actually an guitar on this one
at all. The background for the vocal acrobatics the duo still take on
brilliantly is provided itself by some looping, skewed up sample of Mimi
Parker's voice whizzing around. Oddly, despite this curious backdrop,
it's one of the best and least unnerving moments on the new record,
complete as it is with jaunty strings to keep it just on the right side
of downright sinister. The vocal harmonies between these two can still
knock you off your feet with just how delicately beautiful they are even
if you are only hearing them through one speaker - testament to the fact
that in Parker and Sparhawk we really have discovered two of the most
gifted voices of our generation.
Drums and Guns isnıt so much a stripped back record -- there was
nothing to these songs to remove in the first place. Instead, they
present you with skeletons of songs and succeed in convincing you that
even in this form, they're alarmingly worthwhile. The fantastic
"Breaker" for example, all groaning organ sounds and (un)happy clapping,
sounds like a demo form of something that could have been on previous LP
The Great Destroyer, but whereas Dave Fridmann (who, let's not forget,
produced both of these records - ones which sound totally different, to
his credit) would have turned that in to a breezy, fuzzed up rock joy,
here he does nothing of the sort. The overall ethic of Drums and Guns
just doesn't let him.
Some songs you'll know, if you've seen Low live recently - but they're
not here as you were presented with them before. "Dragonfly" for example
still has those haunting voices saying those haunting words (Drums and Guns
doesn't try to hide the fact that Sparhawk's not had the easiest
time of it of late - we shanıt go in to the story here, but if you want
it, the horse's mouth is the place to go), but again the guitars are
only making intermittent noises and Mimi's sparse drum work is replaced
by distant industrial thuds. For a new guy, bass player Matt Livingston
(replacing Zak Sally) has a lot to do. Not in a flamboyant sense, but he
really does hold things together with just a few notes - often, as in
"Always Fade," apart from bizarre clicking and thudding, his low end
contributions are all that's going on in the way of instrumentation.
Funny how these people can sing lines that don't necessarily contain any
sadness at all, and yet deliver them in just the most cutting of
fashions. Really, when Mimi (on her own song "Dust In The Window") sings
"tell me, where can a girl get a meal?", anyone with a soul will feel
like blubbing. She's there harmonising with herself in the only instance
of vocals appearing in the left hand channel all record long, and when
she's allowed her song to call her very own, of course, she shines.
"Your Poison" arrives, and finally we're granted some of Alan's guitar
playing. And though it doesn't feel like a step backwards (the rest of
the record is so daring that it just couldnıt), it could have fit on
Things We Lost In The Fire. Yep, that good. Tellingly however, it only
lasts a minute and thirteen seconds, before those whirring vocals
reappear alongside an incessantly hammered piano for the chilling and
absolutely mammoth sounding "Take Your Time."
But, in honesty, given the place they put themselves in with this album,
they don't need those guitars. Not when they've perfected the new style
so stunningly on "Murderer" - a track which is, frankly, all of time's
best Low song. If you're one of those people who only download one song
from a record, download this one. If you're the kind of person who only
wants to hear one more song in their lives, hear this one. It will
convince you it's worth hearing others. It's absolutely chilling - a man
on the edge asking God if he needs a murderer, "someone to do your dirty
work." "Donıt act so innocent, I've seen you pound your fist in to the
earth" come across as the words of a famously religious man struggling
with his own faith in the face of a f**ked up world and a crap personal
situation. All the guitars do here is whirr in the background as Alan
and Mimi berate the Lord with utmost virulence, and the end result is
nothing short of astounding. Other bands, you should be embarrassed.
After that, even "Violent Past" sounds like respite, a lighter note to
end on, even though it's heavy, plodding, and concerned with things
altogether unpleasant. As they often do though, they deliver these
unnerving words with such a pretty melody - in a way, this makes it even
more uncomfortable, but regardless, it's certainly a very clever trick
indeed. Drums and Guns then is a record which starts by predicting
your imminent death, and near the end threatens to become a murderer
before recalling its "violent past." Not all's well. But by taking
themselves out of their comfort zone and presenting their bare bones,
Low have on their eighth album breathed new life in to an already
fantastic act.
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