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.


October 11
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