Whispers and Shouts
"How do people react the first time they hear us?" Alan Sparhawk, guitarist and singer for Low, pauses briefly to think. "Something like, 'wow, this is slow.' Everyone who hears us probably realizes they have to listen pretty closely to figure out if they like it or not. Those who don't like it usually think it's too slow and boring. But that's okay."
Dan Andersson, Groove. April 2001
Machine translated. Click
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It's raining at Bloomington Fest 2000.
It's September 14, and it's 7:30 p.m. on the first day of a small local music festival in the college town of Bloomington, Indiana. The first band of the evening is ready to take the stage, and the headliner, Low, hasn't shown up yet.
The organizers are pacing back and forth in the puddles outside Rhino's All Ages.
Finally, the band arrives. They played in Milwaukee the night before, left a little too late, and got stuck in traffic around Chicago.
Alan Sparhawk walks unnoticed into Rhino's and looks around. He has red hair, freckles all the way down his arms, and is carrying a baby in a carrier on his chest. This is Low's first tour since the birth of Hollis Mae, the daughter of Alan and singer-drummer Mimi Parker. Just before eleven, Low takes the stage with a whisper.
"You have to turn it down here," Alan says from the stage. "You have to turn off all the lights."
"This has to be the best thing ever," says Alan.
It's almost 2:00 a.m., and the members of Low are gathered around the kitchen table at Chris Swanson's house, one of the festival's organizers. Alan and the rest of the band are recovering from their set with milk and chocolate doughnuts.
"Don't eat any more now," says Mimi. "You won't be able to sleep tonight." Alan and Mimi have been a couple since high school. They grew up together in Clearbrook, a small farming community in northwestern Minnesota.
"Mim and I have known each other since we were nine years old," Alan explains. "We started dating when we were teenagers."
"Al and I have been married for almost ten or twelve years," Mimi interjects.
"I played a little guitar and was always in some band," Alan continues. "Then I had to quit a band I'd been playing with for a long time. That's when I decided that if I was going to keep making music, I'd have to do it with Mim. That's how it all started."
Everything fell into place almost immediately. Mimi's Moe Tucker-esque, simple drumming and the minimalist songs—stripped of all excess in both arrangements and melodies—were already there.
"I don't know where it comes from," says Alan. "It's just the way we do it. It's not so much that everything has to be perfect. It's more that now I'm going to play this, and then I'll call it a day."
"We don't talk about it much," says bassist Zak Sally in a hoarse, raspy voice. "But there always comes a point when we pare away this and that until everyone feels comfortable with what's left. And then we have a song."" Perhaps the most important thing for Low—the almost divinely perfect harmonic interplay between Mimi's and Alan's voices—was also there from the very beginning. Together, they've sung, sometimes whispered, their way through four studio albums, a live album, and a Christmas album so far.
The band's fifth studio album, Things We Lost in the Fire, was released in February of this year.
"It's just something that's grown as we've become more comfortable with it and as we've experimented and learned what you can achieve with harmonies," explains Alan, taking the last doughnut.
"We realized that our voices were a more unique instrument than a guitar," says Mimi. "I don't know if we even think about it when we're writing songs. It's just become normal for us to use harmonies. They come naturally. It would be stranger if we didn't use them."
"I guess I'd better take off this fascist cap," Zak says with a chuckle, removing an old military cap he found in the band's minivan.
"Yeah," Alan says with a smile. "It could be misinterpreted." Zak mumbles something as everyone lines up to have their picture taken. It's lunchtime the next day; the sun is shining, and everyone is well-rested and in good spirits.
While the others try to decide where they want to go to eat, Alan and Zak start talking about a song from the band's Christmas album. According to Alan, the song, "Just Like Christmas," is based on real events from when Low toured Scandinavia for the first time.
"We'd played in Stockholm and were on our way to the next show in Norway," Alan explains. "It was snowing, so Mim said it was just like Christmas. ‘It's not like Christmas at all,' I said. But by the time we got to Oslo, it had stopped snowing and we got lost."
"Don't stop now," Zak says. "Lay all your cards on the table."
"We got lost and the beds were so small," Alan continues. "It was just like Christmas, you know. We felt so young."
