Low - Kind of a rock'n'roll band

Phil Reynolds, Friends of the Heroes. June 1, 2006

We need Low.

In a world of tabloid-chasing crack whores, nu-metal dullards and autotune chancers who spend more time on their hair than their songs, we need Low.

For the uninitiated (oh, what you're missing!), Low are a three-piece from Duluth in Minnesota. They've been together for over a decade and have released numerous LPs and EPs culminating in last year's definitive "The Great Destroyer", recorded by Dave Fridmann of Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev fame. In the past they've worked with such luminaries as Steve Albini, Tchad Blake, The Dirty Three and even Gerry Beckley (of "Horse with no name" fame). Alan Sparhawk sings and plays guitar, Mimi Parker sings and plays drums and Matt Livingston sings and plays bass.

In the spirit of lazy journalism, I should point out that there are three things it's required - by law, it would seem - to mention at roughly this point in any article about Low:

1. Alan and Mimi are married.
2. They are also Mormons.
3. They play their songs v-e-r-y-v-e-r-y-s-l-o-w-l-y.

They are also, by a long way, the best band in the World.

They've recently resumed a tour which was temporarily curtailed by illness, followed by the departure of bassist Zak Sally, and I was fortunate enough to catch up with them before their gig in Manchester. In the longest dressing room in the world, we sat and chatted as dusk began to fall around us. Alan is very softly spoken, often almost whispering into a hand cupped against his cheek, but is open, funny and sincere. If Alan is the heart of the band, then Mimi seems to be the backbone - she watches benevolently over proceedings, joining in with wry asides and dry observations. Matt is relatively new to the band, but certainly doesn't give that impression - he's a long-time friend and has played with them in the past. He's affable and smiles a lot. They seem happy to let Alan do the bulk of the talking, but the three of them come across firmly as a unit - a gang.

After Alan's finished giving a hugely impressed once-over to the tiny digital 4-track machine my wife's lent me to record on, we start the interview.

If I might take you back to point 2 above, Low are Mormons - or more accurately, Alan and Mimi are. Every single Low article I've read manages to touch on this, one way or another.

So I thought I'd be different and try not to mention it.

And failed miserably.

You see, speaking as a committed atheist, I find that there's a definable/undefinable spirituality to Low's music which both lifts them far above the mediocre and serves to define them. "That's good," says Alan. "I don't think we set out to be specifically religious or anything, as much as we knew it was a spiritual music and I think, unfortunately, religion has been - the concepts of religion and spirituality have been really confused, and people who are very shy of religions are still spiritual people - or even just people who believe in a higher movement going on, but I think the things that I feel in the music are things that just about anybody can feel. I don't think it has to do with our particular religion or whatever. I think it just resonates - I guess my beliefs are that everyone has that capacity to feel something or resonate with something on a spiritual level and you don't necessarily have to have a religious belief system to experience that and to feel things like that - I hope that's in our music, but it's not something we have a ton of control over - it's more just kind of that we're trying to make music that opens up that door and not necessarily trying to dictate to anybody what's going on, because they're gonna know the truth better that we can explain."

Later that night, they play "Silver Rider" from the last LP. As they launch into the massive, wordless harmonies of the chorus, I find myself closing my eyes and feel tears of sheer fucking joy welling up. Embarrassed, I open my eyes and look around. I'm surrounded by people who have also closed their eyes, swept along by the sheer magic these three most ordinary-yet-extraordinary people are making. At that moment, everything else I've ever heard becomes an irrelevance, a footnote. So I do the only thing I can. I close my eyes again and wait for the tears to rise.

Earlier, I'd asked the question every band dreads: "So what do you sound like - how would you describe your music?" It's a rotten question, I know, but I've been asked it before, so why should Low get away unscathed? Alan takes up the mantle: "Well, we're kinda this rock'n'roll band, and some of our stuff's really kinda quiet and slow."

"The only way you can answer that question," interjects Mimi, "is to pretend that you're answering your grandma."

"Yeah, that's true," agrees Alan, adopting a "grandma" tone of voice to general hilarity. "Oh, you have a band? What music do you play, then?" Back to his normal voice, he answers himself. "Well, It's kinda like rock'n'roll. We play a lot of colleges and stuff like that. Some of it's kinda quiet - you might like it."

"Yeah - we harmonise together," continues Mimi, "you might like it, Grandma."

Alan finishes with: "Well, we play around, and there's some people who like what we do, but most don't - Hollis (their daughter) will ask us "Mom, are you guys famous?", and we'll say, "Mmm... a little bit.", "Are you as famous as Green Day?" "No." "Oh... they're really famous, aren't they, Mom?""

"So there you go," summarises Mimi. "We play music that some people like, but most don't."

I'm actually a relative latecomer to the wonders of Low, stepping up to the table only with the release of "A Lifetime of Temporary Relief", the mammoth 3CD box-set of out-takes and rarities. Within seconds of starting to play the first CD, it became obvious that this band was something special, something to cherish. The box set also features a DVD, featuring all Low's promo videos up to that point (including a hidden, 20-minute, version of the mighty "Canada"!) as well as a trio of documentaries. One of these, "The Making of Trust" (their seventh album), contains one of the truest pieces of rock cinema I've ever seen. They're working out "La La La Song" prior to recording, and while Sparhawk is pleased with the way things are going, Parker and bassist Sally are not. As the camera lingers over a muted Mexican stand-off with the three participants markedly failing to make eye contact and glaring at the floor, it lays bare an emotional honesty that all the self-pitying psychodrama of, say, a Metallica biopic couldn't even begin to capture. No fireworks, no prima-donna histrionics, no chest-beating declamations - just three people isolated in argument as only true friends can be. "It wasn't all like that," says Mimi, "but there were definitely pretty intense moments."

"Yeah," continues Alan. "There were a couple moments on that [documentary] that were just embarrassingly... real." I suggest that this is something of a Low trait - this openness and honesty - reflected in both in their approach to their music and their approach to documentary media, culminating most obviously with a long, detailed post on their website (www.chairkickers.com) where Alan laid bare the bones of his illness and offered heartfelt apologies for the fact they had to cancel shows. "Which theoretically could have been the worst fucking way of doing it..." He laughs, ruefully. "There's two theories: You either be honest or be glaringly - I don't know - contrary. There's a lot of artists out there that spend a lot of time sitting up late, thinking about how to make themselves more... mythical, and I've just never really had any patience for that. Sometimes something happens that's a little more public than you wish and then you spend the next year or two trying to catch up with it - I think part of me has given up on trying to figure out on where the balance is - it's like the balance is a lie, you know - just don't lie anymore. Tell the truth. Actually, David Bazan from Pedro the Lion, he was saying this thing that that's how we could solve the world right now - that's what you've gotta do right now to start fixing things - so tell the truth. In everything."

"Not that it's gonna solve all our problems," Mimi adds.

"Nah. It's not gonna solve all our problems," agrees Alan, "but it means there are fewer things on my list that I have to deal with every day... and I think if there's trouble, and we have to do things we don't like doing - like cancelling shows, then we owe explanations. Although I guess with hindsight I could have cut [the message] down to about a paragraph and a half, but that was where I was at the time."

As the Manchester sun continues to set over the University precincts, talk naturally (especially considering that one of Low's first releases was a cover of "Transmission") proceeds in the direction of that city's finest. "Yeah, for me they were definitely a big influence," Alan admits. "I'd say as far as my... the music that shaped me when I was growing and discovering music, Joy Division were a significant discovery - it's something that's stuck with me for a long time - some of the things you pick up when you're younger, you don't carry on listening to..."

"The Electric Light Orchestra," I suggest, revealing my shamefully mis-spent youth. "I've got eight albums..."

"Oh come on, that stuff's not so bad," laughs Sparhawk. "Maybe Jeff Lynne'd be a good producer for us - or Phil Spector, but we'd have to go to jail for that."

"No - he's not in jail yet - his trial's been postponed," Mimi informs us, and I'm briefly left hanging with the tantalising idea of a Spector-produced Low album...

"Yeah, Joy Division are definitely one of my favourite bands - they were there at that age when I felt really strongly about music, when I felt strongly about that quest to find my favourite music in the world," Alan continues, prompting me to ask the others about their influences.

"I'm terrible," admits Parker, "I have no idea. I grew up with my parents listening to 70's country, and I'd say that probably has the most influence - then my sisters had Nazareth records..."

"I always have trouble with questions like that, you know - there are so many bands," says Matt, "I mean, I like a lot of reggae and I think that's influenced my bass style - that and Neil Young's "Harvest" - in fact probably more "Harvest" - it was around my house, I used to listen to it [all the time] - those guys were Rn'B session guys, and that kinda led me to a lot of things, liking that sound."

As Mimi and Matt head to the tour van to pick up the final essentials for tonight's show, I ask Alan his opinion on the fact that it now seems quite trendy for bands of a certain persuasion (well, OK, generally those currently pigeonholed as "Emo") to "come out" of the Christian closet - as if their record companies have espied a new demographic to be exploited. "I think it's unfortunate, really - the more that trend continues, the more it's going to alienate people who don't necessarily identify with religion but are struggling with their own concepts of life, and where they came from and where they're going - why can't music just be its own language, why do we have to qualify it - why does it have to be labelled and put into some sort of identification with one specific philosophy or not? I think it's an insult to music, I think music, if anything, is closer to the language of God or the true, true language..."

"A purely emotional form?" I offer.

"No. It's more than that - I think there's more truth and more unity, and that music paints a picture - sort of a sketch - of what our potential can be as humans - interacting with one another, forces of good and evil, positive and negative, growth or death... Music should transcend."

And that's what Low's music does. It transcends. Grounded, by its very nature, in the smallest of details - the hiss of a cymbal, the static hum of an amplifier, the frailest whisper of a harmony, the slurring of fingers on strings - it so often takes on wings of steel and flies beyond the place where rational judgements can be made and appreciation handed out, rising to a level where nothing else needs to exist.

The tape stops rolling, and we continue to chat for a while longer, as darkness falls across the North-West's second city, about Eminem, about Death-Metal bands with illegible logos (my favourite is a Glasgow band whose name appears to be "Deeds of Fish"), about how computer-based recording can rip the raw, dirty, beating heart from rock'n'roll, about the fact that listening to Low apparently implies freedom from prosecution in the Isle of Man (a true story...), about children, Matt's saxophone, Alan's seemingly large list of side projects... We laugh a lot and they happily sign autographs. Alan draws a strange, confused, hand/cow hybrid on the sleeve of my "Low - Live in Europe" DVD but he begins pacing the room as showtime draws nearer and I realise it's time to say my farwells. As we shake hands, I tell them that, in my opinion at any rate, Low are the best band in the world.

"Oh," smiles Mimi, "Not much to live up to, then..."

Two hours later, they more than live up to it. They seem to be channelling the songs rather than playing them. Stock-still on stage, they are nonetheless the most compulsive live act I've ever seen and when things go - only slightly - awry as on the otherwise magisterial "Cue the Strings", it simply serves as a reminder that these are merely three human beings. Occasionally, in this characterless box of a room, we need reminding that that's all they are as the magic they make - the true, true language - soars around us.

Low. We need them.