Low
Brings Distinctive Sound to the ’Sco
By
John MacDonald
Representing
the ’Sco’s first major rock act of the semester, Low
took the stage Friday night to a packed house and a willing audience.
Despite their hushed harmonies and minimalist melodies, enough of
the essential intimacy of the Duluth, Minnesota trio’s sound
managed to assert itself above the clang of breaking beer bottles
and the rumble of laughter and shuffling feet. With admirable support
from long-time American Music Club frontman Mark Eitzel, the evening
proved to be as emotionally cathartic as it was a positive start
to the fall concert schedule.
A group better suited to playing cathedrals than small clubs, Low’s
music is built on the assumption that it is the slowest tempos,
the simplest of melodies and the most fragile of harmonies that
express the purest of sentiments. Where much of American rock ‘n’
roll aligns pummeling rhythms, crushing guitar and a sense of musical
abandon with the voice of “real” emotional intensity,
Low take the opposite approach by applying constraint to the task
of individual expression.
But before Low could work their magic, it was Eitzel’s job
to get the crowd in the mood. A mess of self-abasement and political
satire, in between songs Eitzel would allude to sexual encounters
with George W. Bush one minute and viciously critique his artistic
merit the next.
But however much of this behavior was an act, Eitzel’s music
proved as endearing as his persona. Ranting like a toned-down Allen
Ginsberg with an acoustic guitar, Eitzel and his talented drummer
ran through tunes about everything from gay strippers to Jeff Buckley.
Even if Eitzel’s guitar pick-up kept cutting in and out, his
connection with the audience never did.
Low’s set focused heavily on their just released album, Trust.
The opening number on both the album and Friday night’s performance,
was the haunting “(That’s How You Sing) Amazing Grace”
— an ode to the famous Christian hymn of the same name. This
tune, like many others that night, was built off a simple four-note
guitar melody intermittently repeated by Alan Sparhawk, the band’s
vocalist and guitarist. Vocalist and percussionist Mimi Parker,
Sparhawk’s wife, used her drum kit (consisting of only a bass
drum, a snare and a symbol) to bang out repetitive quarter-note
rhythms. Underneath it all, Zak Sally’s low-end heavy bass
interjected two or three note comments.
The real power of Low’s music is in the interplay of Sparhawk’s
and Parker’s voices. With lyrics nearly as straightforward
as the music, the couple’s harmonies complete the songs as
much as they turn them into mesmerizing explorations in minimalism.
In the mid-set rendition of “Two-Step” (from 1999’s
Secret Name), as in “Amazing Grace,” the couple’s
understated harmonies were saved for the song’s climax, making
them the primary focus of the performance and giving the song a
gravity rarely associated with such bare-bones instrumentation and
melodic
structure.
The deathly slow tempo of much of the set made these moments even
more cathartic. When Sparhawk and Parker finally reached the last
line in “Shots and Ladders,” a plodding three chord
dirge, you felt like some great weight had been lifted from your
shoulders when the group sang in concert, “See how you feel
in the morning!”
But as much as Low love to make you wait, they’re not adverse
to letting you eat your desert before dinner every once in a while.
On “Canada,” the song that provided the most immediate
thrills, Sally pounded out a downright evil bass riff that would
have fit right in on any Joy Division record. And on “Snowstorm,”
a tune introduced as “A song about the difference between
being a kid and having kid,” Sparhawk broke out his 12-string
for afolksy jam reminiscent of Neil Young in one of his better moods.
The highlight of the night, though, had to be Low’s encore
performance of “Dinosaur Act,” the first single off
2001’s Things We Lost in the Fire, and one of their best songs.
After taking an audience member’s request for the tune, Sparhawk
rejoiced that he would “get to play another guitar solo,”
something which the inconspicuous frontman rarely does.
At the moment of truth, Sparhawk invoked a few anguished notes from
his Telecaster before proceeding to run the length of his guitar
across his mic stand. Instead of coming off like some seasoned shred-master,
the singer ended up knocking over his stand and entangling himself
in his guitar cords as he threw his axe around the stage illiciting
howl after howl of feedback. Cheers rained down on Sparhawk as he
desperately tried to reorient himself, plug his guitar back in and
save the song from drowning in his mess.
Though the song finally came to a close with Sparhawk still scrambling
to get his guitar in working order, his performance proved as endearing
as it was unexpected. Thankfully, the guitarist convinced his bandmates,
who had begun to walk off-stage, to remain for one more crowd-pleaser
— a gorgeous rendition of “Over the Ocean” from
their 1996 offering Curtain Hits the Cast.
Despite the relative success of Friday night’s performances,
one can’t help but feel that Low would have been better suited
playing a larger more austere venue like Finney Chapel whose acoustics
would have catapulted their music’s ambience into the stratosphere.
In a large, seat-filled auditorium they could escape the beer-swilling
chit-chat of the ’Sco. Though the audience was respectful
and most of Low’s set broke through the din, one couldn’t
help but feel the band’s music was a little out of place in
the club’s raucous atmosphere and lost some of its power as
a result.
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