Low takes the high road

Orla Swift, Record-Journal. March 25, 1994

It's a question we journalists don’t normally get to ask rock ‘n’ roll musicians, lest their sensitive, feisty little egos explode into a string of expletives punctuated by the telephone slamming down.

But when Low bassist John Nichols is asked how frequently people fall asleep at his shows, he understands.

“At some of our hometown gigs, it's kind of interesting, because not a word is said in the audience,” says Nichols in a telephone interview from a phone booth in Danbury, his voice so hushed one pictures him crouched in a church confessional, not a phone booth. “It's so quiet when we play that if a pin dropped it would sound like an explosion. I'm sure at one of those shows maybe someone has found himself dozing off, although no one's ever told us that.”

Low's free Tuesday gig at 7:30 p.m. at Waterbury's Brass City Records — with Southington's The Differents opening — will test the snooze factor.

The small, second-floor record store drags out oversized pillows for its intimate in-store concerts, the perfect setting for an evening doze.

Add Low guitarist Alan Sparhawk's soothing vocals and dreamy guitar meanderings, and Sparhawk's wife Mimi Parker's brushed drumming on her one-snare, one-cymbal drum “set” and you've got just the cure for the insomniatic blues.

It's a sound that's selling well, though one reads more about its louder '90s brothers, hardcore and grunge. Bands like Codeine and Red House Painters are shuffling along the same path walked by ambient music predecessors like Brian Eno. The incessantly-touring, Minnesota-based trio came together after Nichols saw Parker and Sparhawk (buddies since fourth grade) performing in another, louder band and suggested that they unite and turn down the decibel level by 359 degrees. “That's kind of where I've always been,” says Nichols, whose musical studies began with classical bass and cello.

Although the dreamy, dark music makes one think of hallucinogens and inebriation, Low steers clear of any such mind-alterers, says Nichols. It's just not their thing, he says.

Besides, Parker and Sparhawk are Mormons, and thus forbidden to indulge.

Mormons? Mormon rock ‘n’ rollers? Yeah, yeah, says Nichols. So big deal.

“It's not as weird as people think.” says Nichols. “When people hear the word Mormon, they jump right away to thoughts of poligamy and baby killing. It's not that weird. It's no more weird than Catholicism, which to me is as weird as you can get.”