Up Low

A confluence of Low references on various message boards, twitter feeds, blogs, and actual conversations has got me thinking about the band again. After going back and re-reading what I wrote about all their albums and EPs released between 1994 and 2001, I started to feel winsome—the way you feel when you start thinking about someone who used to be your best friend but for some reason, no real reason, you lost touch.

So I've been attempting to get back in touch with the band. I downloaded Trust, which is the first Low album I didn't pay attention to upon release. It's a good album, not deserving of my ignorance. I'd always thought of it as being the first Low album that just kinda sounded like other Low albums, but I realize now that's not the case. It's a tense record. It's the first one they'd done where they let multiple songs stretch to great lengths. It broods like other Low songs brood, but it broods a lot. There are a few light moments, relatively speaking—"La La La Song," for instance—but for the most part Trust strikes me as a spacious and dark album.

I don't know the record that well yet, to be honest. I still feel like we're trying to reconnect with each other. We've both grown, we're different people. Did we have differences before? Was that why we lost touch? Or did I just move away? I have The Great Destroyer and Drums and Guns on my eventual to-buy list too. I've heard select tracks from each and had previously thought they were okay, or bad. But for some reason I feel I want to try again. Oh, also, the new album. C'mon. They just dropped a track from that record, "Try to Sleep," which is lovely.

Coincidentally I had my iTunes library on shuffle the other day and "Venus" came on, which was originally a 7" single from 1997 and is now found on the Lifetime of Temporary Relief set. I hadn't heard it in a long time but it's really just a great little pop song. Which got me thinking about all the other great little pop songs they've done. So perhaps in response to the edginess of Trust, or because of hearing "Venus," or due to my enjoyment of "Try to Sleep," or simply of the spirit of trying to reignite an old friendship, I made a playlist of a bunch of my favorite "poppy" Low songs. 

• Venus (1997)

• Starfire (from Secret Name, 1999) 

• Try to Sleep (from C'mon, 2011) 

• California (from The Great Destroyer, 2005) 

• Those Girls (Song for Nico) (2001)

• Dinosaur Act (from Things We Lost in the Fire, 2001)

• Immune (from Secret Name, 1999)

• Hatchet (Optimim Version) (2007)

• La La La Song (from Trust, 2002)

• Don't Carry it All (2000)

   

   

Comments

[Alex V. Cook]

Off Low-topic, but have you heard the Dirtbombs, Party Store yet? Detroit garage revisionist revisions of Detroit techno classics with just the right amount of chill in the blood. I think you might dig it.

Alex