Stickman's to hit 'Low' point

Toni Wilson, The Dispatch-Argus. November 5, 1998

There are many reasons why bands come together and play the music they play. Usually, band members start out as good friends, united by the love of a certain kind of music and the desire to make something similar but different.

Nearly every band wants fame and stardom. It wants to be signed by a big label, sell lots of records, have videos all over MTV and tour the world as huge stars. It's not often you find a group that dares to be completely unlike any other band you have ever heard and that, in the beginning, didn't seem to care much about the whole stardom trip. Then again, most people haven't discovered the band Low.

Hailing from Duluth, Minnesota, this three-piece has anything but the typical story, or the typical sound. Its music is like a nice, slow Sunday after a hellish week -- sparse and hypnotic, while full at the same time; deliberate in every note and word, while being extremely slow. How this band got its sound is an interesting story.

Singer/guitarist, Alan Sparhawk, had been in a rock band in Duluth for a number of years. The group had been aiming at "the big time" for a while. Mr. Sparhawk, knowing this wasn't his scene, "finally got enough guts to quit," and decided to do something completely different.

This is where Sparhawk's wife and future Low percussionist and vocalist, Mimi Parker, came into the picture.

"I knew if she was going to be in the band it was not going to be loud and raucous," Sparhawk said. Influences such as Joy Division and the Velvet Underground helped Low's unique sound along. "I thought it would be interesting to take the same tool to make something really quiet and slow and to barely play," Sparhawk said.

Mr. Sparhawk got together with bassist John Nichols and worked on a few songs. They brought them to Parker and soon, Low was officially born. This was in 1993, and everything pretty much went at breakneck speed for the band after that. The summer of that year, the group was invited to New York to record by a producer they knew, and was quickly asked to put together an album.

This, of course, surprised the members of Low more than anything. "It was like, 'Well, fancy that, we met two people in New York who like our stuff and one is a record producer and the other works for a record company,'" Sparhawk said. "Then we thought, 'We'd better go home and write some more songs.'"

By the end of 1993, Low was signed to Vernon Yard Records. Zak Sally replaced Mr. Nichols on bass after Low's first CD on Vernon Yard, "I Could Live in Hope."

Shortly after, Low released two albums and two EPs, had two videos on MTV and were touring constantly. The band began to rise to indie stardom.

Then its deal with Vernon Yard ended, due to mergers within its parent company, Virgin Records. "They kept what was working at the time," Sparhawk said. "And what was working was the Chemical Brothers and Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn. So all the rock bands got dropped, including us."

This, of course, didn't seem to bother the trio much. They were grateful for all the lucky breaks that had come and weren't to be without a label for long. A few different labels vied for the band, but Low went with Chicago-based Kranky Records. Kranky had been big fans of the group for a while, and Low knew of the label through Chicago gigs.

"They are a respected label," Mr. Sparhawk said. "They don't screw around and try things that are too expensive and stupid. They are more concerned with putting out music. We are having a great time with them."

Currently, Low is on the road, supporting its latest release (the first on Kranky), "Songs for a Dead Pilot."

Later in November, Low plans to go to Chicago and begin work on its next album for Kranky, which will be due in March. While it's still a work-in-progress, Mr. Sparhawk did mention that the band was adding more instruments, such as strings and pianos, that would add to the Low sound.