Preamble/Qualifications

So as soon as Matthew Perpetua started writing about R.E.M. I thought I'd like to do one of these, and Mike on the Mountain Goats and Erik on Robyn Hitchcock only strengthened my resolve (to say nothing of people whom I hadn't previously read trying their hands at Talking Heads and Pearl Jam). I thought about waiting until I was done my thesis, but the fact that I need something to do to give my days a little structure and the fear that someone would grab my topic (Minnesota's finest, Low) first has led me to go ahead and throw my hat into the ring.

The level of quality in these song-by-song blogs I've encountered has been scarily high, and hopefully I won't let the side down. I've only been a fan of Low for a relatively short time now, although I guess six years ago puts us at nearly half the band's life span. Crazy. What I own, and thus what I plan to go through until I'm done, is all eight of the band's studio albums, the Transmission EP, the Christmas mini-album and all of the various tracks collected on the box set A Lifetime of Temporary Relief (a title that seems more apt with each album since). If I find out there's an EP that's not adequately covered by that, I'll try and track it down, and similarly if I get a crack at either live album or the remix disc I'll give them a shot too.

I'm going to try and do one of these a weekday, and unless the spirit moves me the track selection will probably be quasi-random; unlike Mike I'm not restricting myself to the length of the song to write, as that would screw up my habit of not writing whe actually listening to the song. Given how some articles have, in the past, resulted in me temporarily burning myself out on a song or album, let's hope I still feel strongly about Low when I end (or give up), as they're one of my favourites.

Oh, and while I do plan to be forthright about things I don't like, you may want to keep in mind that I'm a huge fan of the band and I don't think they've ever made a bad album. Comments are welcome, and unless we get into actual abuse/stupidity I'll always let them stand, but don't bother knocking me for not being objective. I'm admitting my profound bias here and now.