Venus

A brief word about the new 'singles' tag on this post and "Over the Ocean," before I begin: I'm going by the listing on Low's own site, which means that not necessarily everything that has a video is a single (i.e. "Canada"). I'm only using it for those things that actually had a single release, and I'm only using the tag for the A-side in question, because to try and start labelling everything else collected on A Lifetime of Temporary Relief a b-sides, EP tracks, compilation tracks, etc would be a huge pain in my ass. So, non-a-sides there are covered by the tag for the box set, and everything else gets 'odds and sods,' at least for now.

Alan noted on the old song page that "Venus" was one of the first "pop-y" songs we ever did. we did hesitate over it, thinking it didn't fit with what we were about, but decided we liked the song too much. it would be just as dishonest to suppress something from the heart, as it would be to force ourselves to do a song we didn't feel strongly about. So in one sense, this is where the thaw began, and in another the decision to go with what was 'from the heart' as opposed to what 'we were about' is an important one that all bands must face and on where all the good bands wind up making the same choice. "Venus" is warm rather than chilly, sympathetic to its subject in a friendlier way than their first three albums had been. Not that I Could Live in Hope, Long Division and The Curtain Hits the Cast are devoid of empathy by any stretch, but there any compassion was implicit behind the control, even on something like "Over the Ocean." "Venus," meanwhile, manages to marry the uplift with the control into something that sounds practically Brill Building compared to much of their earlier material.

All three instruments lock into slow ascending progressions, Mimi's drums especially carrying the impression of an oddly touching volubility despite being very close to her prior work. Alan's guitar lilts along and Zak's bass, as it does deceptively often, winds up carrying the main melodic thrust of the song as Alan and Mimi sing one of their most obviously gorgeous melodies. There's a tiny bit of mellotron as they sing "Have you seen my dreams? / They're the same as yours, it seems" but that only serves to waft "Venus" a little higher.

And while I wouldn't call the song a lightweight, it definitely feels weightless compared to the rigour of a lot of Low's darker material (see for example the similarly 'catchy' "Joan of Arc," or even "Venus"' predecessor "Over the Ocean"). From the moment of the opening guitar fillip and Alan and Mimi softly crooning "Venus / I can hardly see ya" that makes up the chorus (or is the chorus the bit that goes "You're fed up with your friends / You're fed up with the end / You're fed up with the make-up" with such loving, wry fatigue?) the song hoists you aloft, kept up by the occasional snare hit and Zak's unobtrusive rises, basking in the sunshine of the repetition of that "make-up," the band once again making the oddest words tokens of comfort.

And what's the song about? I'm not sure, and Alan doesn't let anything slip, but despite the fact that nothing sonic about "Venus" reminds me of "Below & Above" or "Whore," I get the impression "Venus" may be about a prostitute. Which if so makes it their "Roxanne," only infinitely more benevolent, Christian even, in its focus on the woman's disappointment in her life and their shared humanity ("they're the same as yours, it seems") than any sort of revulsion, judgment, or punishment. Low aren't exactly afraid to hate the sin, but "Venus" is one of the clearer indications that they take seriously their charge to love the sinner.

And, in one of the key components of why I like Low as opposed to a hundred other bands with Christian themes, such love is only made easier and more important by the fact that Low explicitly and repeatedly include themselves in the ranks of sinners, and often Alan seems to reserve the harshest judgment for himself. But not here; "Venus" is sweetness and light personified, and any moral critiques or lessons are implicit rather than hammered into your head. It's a sweet song both lyrically and sonically and they have rarely topped it for pure swooning bliss.

Knowing what I know I know

Ugh, well that went south fast. Some other writing assignments (including a paid one) unfortunately had to take precedance, and I'm off to TO to interview Los Campesinos! tonight. For now, some excellent live video provided by Erik will have to suffice; I've got it set to "Pissing" but it's all quality.

Watch this space

I'm still in Kincardine visiting family for the long weekend (in Canada); today's update should happen this evening once I'm back in Guelph.

Streetlight

And you can see her
Before it cracks and goes out
She throws rocks at streetlights
Keeps the streetlight changer busy

"This gradual loosening of traditional standards, encouraged by such poet-critics as Bob Grumman, has resulted in the word haiku being applied to brief, mathematical "poems," ("mathemaku") and to visual poetry by Scott Helms. This attempt at stretching definitions of haiku can be considered excessive, but Grumman attempts to defend his position by pointing to a similar blurring of definitional boundaries in Japan."

An interlude ("between play") is:
1. In music/theatre, as a separate creation/movement (see also overview of the different meanings of interlude in the Entr'acte article):
1.1 a short play or, in general, any representation between parts of a larger stage production: see entr'acte.
1.2 a piece of music composed of one or more movements, to be inserted between sections of another composition: see also intermezzo, and for the Baroque era: sinfonia.
2. In music, as part of a single movement:
2.1 a section in a movement of a musical piece, see: Bridge or Break.
3. General:
3.1 a period of time between or interrupting a larger one.


Alan: couldn't think of another verse

Lazy

Given how out-of-it, how spaced a lot of Low songs (especially early ones) sound, it says something about "Lazy" that Alan wrote "always wanted to hear a cool echo-y dub mix of this song" on the old Low song backgrounds page. He also notes that although his sister's name is Sarah, "it would be mean to say it's about her."

The bass and drums sound fairly standard but Alan's guitar has a shimmering, underwater feel that manages to not approach the Durutti Column's sound (the standard for that kind of guitar effect), and is due to a weird vibrato Alan got from an old amp (one he doesn't have any more). It's interesting to think what he could make of this sound, if he was still interested in that kind of effect. The band's sound seems to be moving away from the creepy indeterminacy of the early years to something more definite, more sharply defined (even on ostensibly foggy or distorted songs like "Take Your Time"). Low used to be more reticent, used to keep their cards closer to their chest.

"Lazy"'s lyrics only enhance that; aside from the refrain of "Sarah, Sarah you're lazy" there's just near-constant repetitions of the sentiment that "it's not enough, there's not enough for two." Alan's coy half-demurral makes me think that "Lazy" is a teasing glimpse back into the selfish ways of kids, not just his sister's but his own as well. Who with siblings hasn't realised as they grow up that you didn't need what you used to think you needed? "She says it's not enough for two," but so does Alan. They're both lazy, and while the aqueous atmosphere of "Lazy" suggests that may be because of humidity as much as anything, hindsight suggests they're also too lazy to make a productive compromise instead of haggling over what is probably, when you get right down to it, enough for two.

Kindly Blessed

If what we create when we're not trying too hard is more revealing of our true selves,* then "Kindly Blessed" is definitely the most interesting solo Mimi song. She wrote it in five minutes while washing the dishes, after Secretly Canadian asked the band for an a cappella song for a compilation. Given the way the band's religion and use of religious themes is often used by media interlocutors, the lyrics deserve reproduction in full:

Don't ask me for a favor
Don't ask me for a plea
I'll only do your bidding
If you stop cajoling me

But I'll cry, cry, cry like the best
Cry, cry, cry like the rest
Don't ask me to forgive you
I'm not so kindly blessed

Frustrating as it seems
You're not the first today
Excuse me for my needs
There is no other way

So I'll cry, cry, cry like the best
Cry, cry, cry like the rest
Don't ask me to forgive you
I'm not so kindly blessed
Don't ask me to forgive you
I'm not so kindly blessed

Well there, what does that mean? Other than Mimi Parker is a songwriter, and like any other songwriter maybe she is capable of writing songs that both do and don't reflect her personal beliefs. Or maybe that she's a human being, and even the most devout, good hearted human beings have moments of days where we're just not that kindly blessed. There's a lot to like about the song, from the fact that any time we get a better 'view' of Mimi's gorgeous voice is a treat to the way multiple Mimis kick in on the "cry, cry, cry" parts, to the way "Frustrating as it seems / You're not the first today" makes me think of the telemarketers who call when I'm not working in the afternoon.

Mimi, being quieter than Alan in terms of number of songs written, interviews done and so on and so forth, often comes across as a bit inscrutable, at least as far as I can tell. A song like "Kindly Blessed," both gorgeous and with a bit of dark humour to its delivery, goes a long way to reminding us that incredible voice and daunting silence aside she's just a person like anyone else.

And also, that is one hell of a melody for being written in five minutes. Wow.

*[please temporarily ignore the multitude of problems with this thesis; it's one I'm sure you've heard before and my use of it here for arguments sake doesn't mean I think it has much truth to it]

Please excuse me

The festival was incredible, but some shit is going down today; service returns to normal tomorrow.

BRB

I've got a music festival to go this weekend and a lot of work to do before/after then; see you Monday.

Over the Ocean

"Over the Ocean" was the first song I read about as Low's peak, in a long forgotten article or webpage, some precursor of mine declaiming to anyone who would read that the band had somehow fused pop perfection and their usual crystalline, glacial phrasing into something mindblowing.

In the period before Trust came out (in other words, in the period when Things We Lost in the Fire sent me scrambling back through their discography looking for more), The Curtain Hits the Cast was my favourite Low album, in no small part due to "Do You Know How to Waltz?"'s excessiveness (I was also listening to Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven and Come On Die Young a lot), but partly because of this song. That writer was and is right; despite the more pop moves they've made before and since (including the album-length gestures of relative inclusion that were Secret Name and Things We Lost in the Fire) there is nothing in Low's discography that is quite as comforting as "Over the Ocean."

I've had a raging headache all day for some unexplained reason, and this was the only Low song I wanted to hear. The first time I was on a plane over the, err, ocean I listened to this song seventeen times. I once wrote a rather poor, gushy, article about the song. What I love about the rest of the album is its almost sumptuous darkness, perfectly reflected by the dark curtain in the cover art, and "Over the Ocean" partakes of a bit of that, having been written by Alan on bass while waiting for Zak to join, sick enough that he could only hit a few notes (including that high "Iiiiiiii'm" at the beginning of the chorus). The non-chorus lines are brief but suggestive:

Over the hills, over the dell
Over the fireline
Over the sand, over the plan
Over the empire

And if I belong, then I'll be longer than expected
And if I'm wrong, the mighty and strong will be rejected

This is bookended, of course, by many repetitions of "I'm over the ocean." What does it mean? A few albums back they sang of the sea being a long, long way away from them (and both "Sea" and this song feature Alan and Mimi's not-quite-unison on the repeated lines, although only "Over the Ocean" makes it feel like a chorus), and now they're over it - there's definitely a feel of being above all worries, all stress, all problems. Despite the fact they usually moved at a more deliberate pace than most of their contemporaries this is one of the surprisingly few times they can actually make you feel like everything is moving in slow motion (as compared to, say, "Shame," where a humid, sultry night is evoked but no sort of wading-through-air feeling the way this song does). It's an effect that the gorgeous video presents as well, although the video also brings to mind glenn mcdonald's remarks on how terrifying Low can be live. I'm going to quote his most striking passage, possibly for the second time, just because I love it that much:

The scariest thing about seeing Low play is seeing them play, or, really, seeing them not play. The songs don't sound any different in concert, but where the silence between notes is passive, when you're just listening to it, when the players are standing right in front of you, deliberately not playing, waiting expressionlessly for it to become time for the next note, the suspension assumes an active identity of its own. Standing in the room with Low is a trial, and one in which you can learn some things about your attention span, your preconceptions about performance and public consumption of art, and your physical tolerance for stasis. You can try to simulate this environment, perhaps by standing up and closing your eyes while you listen, and if Low never visits your town I won't begrudge you your closest approach, but you're not testing the same thing. You need people, and the rustle of air conditioners, and somebody behind you coughing, and the creak of leather-jacket sleeves as the guy in front of you reverses his arm positions, and Alan, Mimi and Zak managing to make eye contact with nothing, not even the floor. You need to know that you paid to stand in this room, and that if the show goes on too long you'll miss the last train, and that, unbelievably, the three of them have done this every night for the last three weeks. You need to know that they have performed these songs, and lived through it, even though when you look in their faces you can't always tell how. You need to sense how wrong it would be to scream. Without these things around you, a recording of the sounds made at such an event is no more edifying or sensible than the audio tape of an avalanche, or a poisoning, or a dream in which the world finally stops its odious twirl.

"Over the Ocean" is the song that captures the best, for me, that sense that it would be wrong to intrude, to shout over top of it. I got a call from a friend while writing this entry, and at one point she asked me what was playing in the background. I turned up the volume a bit and held my phone near the speaker for the duration of two or three "I'm over the ocean"s. Now she'd like to borrow a Low CD. This is not coincidence. There's something protean about the song's appeal, at least lyrically, with the ocean standing in for anything you want - even the ocean. If they ever put out a best-of (and oh, how I finally, ruefully understand my father and others when they have claimed that some band or another isn't done justice by one of those!), "Over the Ocean" has to be on it. There are times I find its warm embrace almost trite, having listened to the albums so often that I'm more likely to fixate on a "Mom Says" or a "Pretty People" or a "Home," but when I'm away from the music "Over the Ocean" is the one I remember, more often than not.

Whitetail

I seem doomed to have epically shitty nights, as far as sleep goes, on the occasions where I close one night and open the next morning. Last night this was not down to Frailty-inspired insomnia like last time, but rather one of my girlfriend's cats decided that he should pee on my side of the bed. I'd think he doesn't like me, but he's done it when I'm not sleeping there before (or so I hear).

The segue from "Sunflower" into Whitetail used to be pretty seamless on my old Discman, although some of the programs I've used since have insisted on sticking a one second pause in there. Right now, listening to it looped, there's a surprisingly natural rhythm to the way Mimi's brushed cymbal clatter subsides and arises again when the song starts over. That constant susurrus of cymbal is the most striking thing about "Whitetail," and one that most closely corresponds to the state of my head after not quite getting enough sleep (although a good breakfast helped). The incredibly patient, carefully placed bass notes and Alan's increasingly strident guitar strum help the song get more intense, but really in my memory the thing is just one hissing, darkly foreboding mess of cooed "closer, closer"s. Even though they only occur twice:

Stay out
All night
Waste time
Waste light
Closer, closer
Ever closer

You win
you fail
Exit
Whitetail
Closer, closer
Never closer

So again we have that many words for a five minute song; this only amplifies the hypnotic, brain-numbing effect of all that cymbal. I always thought this song was about staying up too late, not exactly a stunningly original take. But something about "You win / You fail" perfectly captures how it feels to hit 5 am without any real reason for being up, the kind of long, music-and-Freecell fuelled nights I had in second year. That was, naturally enough, when I started listening to Low via this album, and so "Whitetail" is evocative both of the general feeling (of both fatigue via being up too late and the shattered remnant that is your body and mind the next morning) and of a specific time and place for me. There's something almost nightmarish about it, something redolent not just of staying up but of being forced to; it could perfectly soundtrack some sort of hellishly surreal short film about sleep deprivation torture. Don't get me wrong, I like the song, and when I'm fully rested it even feels kind of soothing (especially as just one song on an album, between "Sunflower" and the mighty "Dinosaur Act"), but in this state or for this duration there is something very, very intimidating about "Whitetail" indeed.

Oh, and all Alan had to say about this one was "lyrics were inspired by zak 'comic books' sally. whitetail is a type of deer." I have no idea what "Whitetail" might have to do with comic books, either the superhero type or the type Zak makes.

A minor adjustment

So I got sick and tired of all that black and switched templates. I still don't have enough free time to get into the nitty gritty of making my own so I'm using one called "Tekka" with minor adjustments. One of my favourite parts of it is the way that, at the resolution and screen width I use, the title of the blog stacks neatly. Feedback is always welcomed, of course, but for now I'm pretty happy with it.

Walk Into the Sea

There are two songs on The Great Destroyer that mention the album's title. "Silver Rider" is much more ambiguous, saying "The great destroyer / She passes through you like a knife," which still leaves plenty of room for "Walk Into the Sea"'s more direct formulation to apply: "Yeah, time's the great destroyer / Leaves every child a bastard."

As with most recent Low songs, Alan and Mimi's children (or at least the fact that they are parents) resonates through those lyrics, but what is bizarre and wonderful about "Walk Into the Sea" is that it is a song at peace, and even joyous, while considering the end. That it should lead smoothly not into a quiet retirement (as the album made me fear at the time) but into the harsh glare of mortality found on "Pretty People" is the oddest juxtaposition I can think of in Low's work, and no less so just because the songs are separated by albums and a year.

The song starts with some anticipatory guitar pickup noise and then Mimi launches into one of her best drum parts, reaching towards but deviating from the classic "Be My Baby" one - twothree beat. That beat (hers is more onetwo - three - four) and Alan's muscularly strummed guitar are the foundation of the track, and over it Alan asks "Do I have to stay alive / Just to keep our dresses white?" and sings of the way "You tell me about a Savior / And how the soul lives on forever." The note of almost blithe unconcern I mentioned on "Just Stand Back" is here revealed as nothing less than the product of love; even as he sings "And time's just a hunger / It bleeds us out to nothing,"* the conclusion Alan comes to is "When it finally takes us over / I hope we float away together."

After the second repetition of those lines there's a pause in the drums, a prolonged and lovely "oooooh" from Alan and Mimi and either a xylophone or some bells count down to the brief wordless coda of the song.

I'm not sure what it is about "Walk Into the Sea" that fills me with such a deep sense of contentment, that convinces me that such a sense is shared by the song and by Alan (at least for the duration). The closing diptychs of the last few Low albums have been extremely interesting, and just as "Murderer" and "Violent Past" interact with each other to make the end of Drums and Guns so satisfying "Walk Into the Sea" is almost a comment upon its predecessor, "Death of a Salesman." I'll save getting into that song for its own entry, of course, but the Alan of "Walk Into the Sea" could almost be the beaten-down "prisons and math" man from "Death of a Salesman" had he chosen differently. As with "Pretty People" (although expressed less harshly) this song is about realising that everything is not all right, that viewed a certain way we're all fucked, and that there's little we can do about it. I think it's instructive that the opening lines are "I could walk into the sea / And choke away the memory," and not "I will" etc. Part of this song is very much in line with the existentialist thought that part of our freedom comes from realising that the only thing that keeps us alive is our decision, moment by moment, to keep living. And that therefore even the fact that we're all gonna die can't be that bad - if it was, we wouldn't decide to stick around.

So "Walk Into the Sea" (and do note what part of the song that title emphasizes!) feels like both an acknowledgment that our fates are in our own hands (Alan doesn't mock that saviour he's told about, but he doesn't sound particularly keen on Him either), and a deep certainty that above and beyond any of the things discussed in the song which are depressing on the face of it everything is going to be okay. That last part I think is down to the way they sing "Walk Into the Sea," and part of that is in contrast to "Death of a Salesman" and its immediate predecessor "Pissing." If the album represents the same 'voice' throughout, by the time of this final song that voice is at peace with all its anger and regret, and looks forward to both life and the inevitable "floating away" with aplomb. A trick we could all do well to master.



* (usually when there's a discrepancy between Low's own site and the SongMeanings one (which I use because Low's new site doesn't have all of their lyrics yet) I go by the band; but when Low's site tells me the second line in that couplet is "It leads itself to nothing" and my own careful listening to the track tells me that there is a definite 'b' sound and nothing that sounds like itself, I both go with the other version and also wonder why this would be edited/changed (or unchanged, if the 'bleeds' version is a later gloss) for public consumption.

Pretty People

All soldiers, they're all gonna die

"Pretty People" might just be the most disturbing song in Low's oeuvre, certainly the most disturbing one I can think of from their studio albums (and so, as I mentioned in my review, it takes more than a little chutzpah to put it as the opener to probably their most high-profile effort to date). I'm not a particularly dark person, at least I don't think so, and as I've alluded to or mentioned a bit in recent posts on this blog one of the interesting and kind of worrying things about going through Low's work song by song is noticing just how negative the band's work often is, and seemingly more so as the years pass. Has it made me like them any less? No, but maybe that's another thing to worry about... the song is, first of all, sonically unpleasant. I love the sound now, but when it starts up with the thick buzzing cloud of locusts (again, the first sound on the record!) and then Alan begins keening the brief lyrics in his most strident and off-kilter tones, it is at the very least bracing. Eventually Mimi plays a basic drum beat, but most of the song is still just that almost sickly droning bzz and Alan sounding, more than ever before, like a man with a "The End Is Near" sign.

And all the little babies, they're all gonna die

One of my problems, I guess, is that going all the way back to Crowded House I (like a lot of people, I assume) have identified more or less with the singers I like. Certainly there are bands and records I love despite finding them semi-alien (The Holy Bible springs to mind), but even with something like the Mountain Goats' Tallahassee one of the things I adore is the way Darnielle makes me empathize with those people. And so it is with Alan. It's wrong to conflate him with the songs, but it does happen to some degree; it's wronger still to conflate me with what I get out of the songs, but still. Do I identify with him/them? Well, yes. What does that say about me, and what do these songs say about Alan? Neither answer is simple (in fact, I'm kind of leaning towards ineffability for the former at the very least), and neither is terribly apparent to me right now. But despite a tendency in Low's music that comes to a head in "Pretty People" that I normally don't like in people I can't in good conscience pretend I don't identify with it too. That would be going backwards; the right approach is to instead accept the stipulation that I do still identify with the Alan of this song and then see where it takes me, however hesitant I am to do that.

All the poets, and all the liars

If I hadn't known that Alan and Mimi were/are Mormons and you had asked me, I probably would have figured them for Puritans. Oh, we're already in trouble! Is there any good connotation to the word 'Puritan' in this day and age? Does anyone say something is puritanical in anything but the pejorative sense? Maybe I'm still just feeling the aftereffects from Stephenson's masterful Baroque Cycle, which I finished last night and in which the main (arguably) character is in fact a lapsed Puritan of a sort, but I don't mean it in the kind of caricatured way people tend to these days. Yes, at times Alan and Mimi seem... not so much judgmental as suspicious of pleasure, tranquility, complacency, the easy way, the obvious. The kind of people I'm thinking of are, above all else, stubborn, especially in their refusal to be reassured. One of the things that keeps their faith from being off-putting to me, someone who possesses at best a radical different sort of faith, is that this restless certainty that vigilance must be eternal is turned upon themselves as much as or even more so on everyone else. Listen to "Whore" or "Immune" or "Lust" or a number of other Low songs; are you so sure they're talking to you? Or are they, like Aurelius in his Meditations, seeking to remind and reinforce themselves?

And all you pretty people

What disturbs me the most, then, is the way Alan sings his lines. He has often, from Trust onwards (if not before, but I would mark "The Lamb" as the first time I noted it) sounded nigh on feverish, like a man sweating out his demons. Even The Great Destroyer had its moments of queasiness and it is a feeling that envelops Drums and Guns (to its aesthetic benefit, I should add). But as much as there has always been a kind of fierce glee in his direst pronouncements on self and others (another thing that, rightly or wrongly, makes me think Puritan), on "Pretty People" there is something almost unholy about the way he sings "All the little babies, they're all gonna die" (and tomorrow or Monday I just might do "Walk Into the Sea" to show the contrasting side). He's not quite happy, and he's not quite mocking, but he is too close to both for comfort. It reminds me of something that Slacktivist has noted repeatedly in his detailed and excellent takedowns of the Left Behind books, the way that the real glory for the books' authors seem to be not so much ascending to Heaven as reveling in the way everyone else goes to Hell. I don't think that's how Alan actually feels, naturally (or even necessarily that "Pretty People" is sung by someone we should identify as Alan with no deviation, although that certain seems a little more likely). In fact, the other thing the almost triumphant air of "Pretty People" brings to mind is Stoicism. We are all going to die, after all, and sometimes there is a mean kind of joy in ensuring that everyone else hasn't forgotten the fact.

You're all gonna die

But still, what does that say about me?

Overhead

Yesterday at work (my unexpectedly long working day being the culprit of TMW,TMW's silence on Tuesday, by the way) I bought the "Dinosaur Act" single, b/w "Overhead" and "Don't Carry It All." This was pretty significant for me, the same way getting Teenage Fanclub's phenomenal Four Thousand Six Hundred and Sixty-Six Seconds: A Short Cut to Teenage Fanclub was. In the latter case, that compilation was the first time I'd ever purchased a best-of type compilation where I already owned all of the non-exclusive tracks; the three new songs and the opportunity to own "Everything Flows" again after I'd sold A Catholic Education convinced me, and sure enough those three new tracks were great enough (and the disc is a good enough introduction, as a loaner) that I don't regret.

"Dinosaur Act," meanwhile, marks the first time I've bought a disc where I already own the exact version of every song on it. The box set A Lifetime of Temporary Relief collects up "Overhead"/"Don't Carry It All" and of course "Dinosaur Act" is one of the highlights of Things We Lost in the Fire and indeed the band's career. So the single marks the point where I officially acknowledge that Low is one of the very few bands that I love enough to collect. With most acts my focus is on ensuring I own everything I love in the smallest possible shelf space (so, for example, my joy at Belle & Sebastian's EP collection, Mogwai's EP+6 and 50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong, which let me ditch 3-4 discs), but with Low pretty much anything I see that I can afford I'll buy.

glenn mcdonald does his usual fantastic job describing the physical single, and as he had since gotten over how blown away he was by "Dinosaur Act" he spares a few words for its b-sides. "Overhead" he says is "an ominous, murmuring noise-collage, Alan and Mimi's voices gliding over loops of incidental guitar twitter and a steady, train-like kettle-drum pulse, perhaps Low's own response to their Bombscare EP collaboration with Spring Heel Jack [which I would still love to hear - Ed.]." The work they've done since makes "Overhead" seems even more typical than it probably was at the time, as it could fit on Trust or (with a little production tweak) Drums and Guns easily. My usual method with posts here is to listen to the song on repeat as I type, and "Overhead" is one of many Low tracks that sounds fantastic that way, one long loop of paranoia and fear. Alan's guitar scraps and Mimi's thud are both well within their musical comfort zone (although the beginning reminds me a bit of "Do You Know How to Waltz?" weirdly enough) but this is one of their darker efforts, almost a quieter brother to something like "Don't Understand."

It also, now that I look at the lyrics for the first time, remind me of John Hillcoat and Nick Cave's tremendous The Proposition. Cave and Warren Ellis' (no, not this one, that one) soundtrack to the film, which I also picked up at work, is an amazing thing and some of the atmosphere of "Overhead" reminds me of it. To say nothing of the words:

Wanted
Bring him back alive if you can
All said
You can tell your lies to the dead
Overhead
You don't have to like what you're fed
Overhead
Overhead

Wanted
Bring him back alive if you can
Trusted
You don't know how fast it could end
Overhead
You don't have to like what you're fed
Overhead
Overhead
Overhead
Overhead

It does sound a bit like the interplay between Captain Stanley and Charlie Burns, and the doom-laden tone of Alan and Mimi (as well as Alan's guitar keens in the interlude between verses) only reinforces the way the song evokes the dully fatalistic, brutal kind of atmosphere that The Proposition has in spades. Of course, the song came out in 1999 and the movie in 2005. But I'm not proposing any sort of direct relationship so much as a kinship of feeling, and "Overhead" is one of Low's best pitch-black songs - I do kind of wish it had been on one of the albums, actually.

Just Stand Back

Aaaaaand we're back. I flew back in from Vancouver on Tuesday but between going right back to work at the used CD place and hanging out with my girlfriend (also significant quantities of jet lag, sleep deprivation and an open bar wedding reception last Saturday) I just couldn't bring myself to update my personal blog, let alone Too Many Words, Too Many Words. Still, I find myself more than a little refreshed by the break, now that muzziness has (hopefully) fully been washed away from driving across this great country of ours. The Praries were especially trippy, there's something surreal about all that flatness and speed.

As you might know from the entry below this one, the night before my friend and I set off on our road trip the girlfriend and I drove to Toronto to see Low live (well, and Wilco). The experience was great, as always, and in the car I played her Drums and Guns as well as The Great Destroyer so that she'd have some familiarity with what they might play. I actually lent them to her at her request a week or so before, but like me she has trouble getting around to things sometimes. What struck me most, however, and what made me wish I'd included this album on the MP3 CDs I made for the trip, was how great an album The Great Destroyer is for driving. I mean, yes, it's still a Low album, but as I noted at the time the differences are much more than just skin deep. The record has taken on new depths in my estimation now that they've shown with Drums and Guns that it may in fact be an offshoot rather than a new direction, and there's something joyous about the songs, even as they still partake of the stark menace that I'm realizing more and more as I write my way through the catalog is Low's real calling card, that makes the open road (well, the 401) the perfect environment for them.

This isn't an album review, so I'm not going to get into how I think this plays out overall, excepting a quick mention that the sequencing and track selection of The Great Destroyer is absolutely fucking flawless. I also mentioned in my review the three tracks ("California," "Step," and our subject today) that strode a good deal closer to pop than most of the band's work, but I think pop was the wrong word to choose; radio rock might be more appropriate, which gives you an even better idea how weird they are from the standpoint of the rest of Low's work (hey, stuff as far back as "Venus" or "Over the Ocean" could be described as pop, or at least populist).

"Just Stand Back," from the opening guitar crunch onwards, best sums up the wide open road feeling that surfaces so oddly on The Great Destroyer, and for once when Mimi harmonizes along while Alan sings "Here comes the knife / You better just stand back / I could turn on you so fast" my response is not hushed reverence but rather to lustily sing along (slightly off-key, I'm afraid). Mimi might not be a very flashy drummer, but here as in the rest of the record she's in the pocket enough that I find myself thumping the steering well in time, and Alan is clear enough in his aim that they mainly stick to a few perfunctory, cryptically mocking verses ("It's a hit / Its got soul / Steal the show with your rock n' roll" is, like many of his lines, both biting and oddly self-incriminating) before launching into that linked series of refrains that constitutes both chorus and fadeout. The aforequoted lines are not miles away from the sort of thing Low often include in their songs; the difference with "Just Stand Back" is the kind of breezily heedless way they sing them. Normally any sort of threat of cutting would be bleak and deliberate and more than a little unsettling. Here's it's effective precisely because they don't sound like they're paying too much attention to you, and so you might actually get cut (cf. The Wrens' "Surprise, Honeycomb," one of the best songs ever written from the perspective of a spree murderer because it doesn't go out of its way to be cryptic).

The Great Destroyer doesn't really have a narrative (nor do any of their albums to these ears, save maybe Drums and Guns) but even if it did I'm not sure where "Just Stand Back" would fit in. Musically, the kind of change-up it provides is an essential part of the album's success (although I'm glad they kept things varied, as an album of "Just Stand Back"s and "Step"s might be a bit much), but lyrically I'm at even more of a loss than normal except for vague generalities. Once again I wish the song backgrounds part of the site had been kept around for longer.

One more thing before I go

I once again underestimated how fast shows at Massey Hall start and how crap driving in Toronto is, so I settled into my seat when Low were part-way through "Take Your Time" (they only played a 45-minute set, so I think I missed one or two songs at worst). To make matters worse, Massey is a deeply shitty venue when you get stuck up on the second balcony, and Low were on the right side of the stage. As we were on the right, I could see Alan and sometimes Matt but only rarely Mimi's head. Matt (the new guy) acquitted himself ably, especially on what Alan announced as a WII-era chaplain's organ, which was definitely present on the album version of "Breaker." I don't care how crap my seats were, or how short the set, or the fact that I had to ask one guy behind us to shut up (he was gracious about it and I thanked him) - it was the highlight of my night. I realise a guy who writes a Low oeuvreblog isn't the least biased witness, but Jeff Tweedy of Wilco praised them on this, the last night of their Eastern Seaboard tour by saying that Low "played thrilling music every single night of the tour" and that they "kicked our ass every night." That's partly just graciousness, I know, but there was an element of truth. Certainly when I saw them it was true (it doesn't help that I hate Wilco's last album, although I do like Nels Cline).

After "Take Your Time," they played:

Dragonfly
Point of Disgust
Cue the Strings
Hatchet
Murderer
Pissing
Violent Past
Breaker

For a few songs they brought out the organ, and Nels Cline sat in on lap steel for "Murderer" and an even more incredible version of "Pissing" than I heard last time. Similarly, "Violent Past" and an organ-less "Breaker" were rocked the fuck up in a really interesting way (I'm a bit too tired to articulate exactly how, but "Breaker" especially showed that if they wanted to continue down the path of "Everybody's Song," they could). "Hatchet" was also much improved, given a kind of effortless poppy bounce that I wish they'd used on the album (as much as I loved the live "Breaker," and we do desperately need another Low live album, I do prefer the album version in that case), which makes for the third or maybe fourth version of that song I've heard, and if I wasn't getting up at 8 am tomorrow to start driving to BC I'd do an entry on it now.

As it is: Low is still incredible live. I can't wait for their next headlining show in Toronto. I'm out for a week and a bit, enjoy yourselves.

Blargh

I had this all set up to be updated normally this week, and then I got a whole pile of hours at my new job, which combined with getting ready for my road trip to BC means I've got no free time! I hate to do this, folks, mainly because I know this is how you lose readers, but I'm going to have to put TMW,TMW on hiatus now and come back to it on the 11th or 12th of July. Won't you put our RSS feed into your favourite reader and check back in when we come back to life?

Sea

one of those songs that just falls in your lap. sounds like an old song - maybe because of the folk harmonies.

That's Alan. And "Sea" certainly did fall into my lap - I didn't have time to do an entry before going to work, and seeking something I could do relatively quickly (I have belatedly become addicted to those Star Wars Lego video games, despite a basic dislike of Star Wars; I skip the cut scenes and get to secret-finding). I was looking for "Streetlight" and thought it was on I Could Live in Hope. It's not but the sub-two minute "Sea" is. And as someone is sleeping the room I type this in, I'm listening to "Sea" on a loop at an extremely low volume. I could get headphones, but I kind of like the effect. Alan and Mimi are just murmuring "The sea is a long, long way / from me" over and over, and it's way too late and I need to get to sleep. "Sea" doesn't grab me very often, and really on record it's basically a pause between "Lullaby" and "Down" (9:46 and 7:24, respectively). It's not a bad song, just one of the less consequential tracks Low have ever put on an album. I'm actually kind of glad I've just spent 40 minutes listening to it; this project, if nothing else, is giving me a whole new appreciaton for this sort of thing.



Important note: We have another new oeuvreblog, the excellently named Music From a Bachelor's Den, where Michael is going over Pulp. This Is Hardcore is one of those records from 1997 I secretly love far more than the more high profile records released that year, so I look forward to seeing how he does; his link is in the sidebar.

Days Of...

I sometimes have problems with writer's block. I didn't used to, and I'm not wholly sure what the issue is now, although certainly my adult life has gotten more stressful as it's gone on (with some breaks). I don't get it, and I know I need to at some point. And it's what results in me sitting here at 3:00 am on a Monday morning, feeling like shit because yet again I have only finished the bare minimum of my writing for the weekend and once again I have started mentally shuffling my plans for the rest of the week to compensate. I hate this feeling, and so partly to give myself more time later today after sleeping and mostly to assuage some of that guilt I'm getting today's entry in now.

"Days Of..." was picked because I wanted a Low song that conjured for me a sensation of absolute stasis that fits the way I tend to feel when I've spent all day not getting done what I had plenty of time to do. I've noted this song's effectiveness in that category before, but it feels more pessimistic than ever this morning. As I note in my mix for Stylus last year, it's just occasional booms of drum and extremely hesitant bass notes (there might be a guitar note or two from Alan in there too, it's hard to focus on the music to be honest). The song is perfectly paced for its six minutes; there is roughly 75 seconds of instrumental at the beginning and the end, and the middle three and a half minutes contains one of Mimi's most precise vocal readings. She's singing, not speaking (there's no doubt about that), but the relative vocal or sonic fireworks of something like "Laser Beam" or "Coattails" are nowhere to be found. She is exceptionally calm and patient, even if the lyrics she sings suggest both disappointment and how we deal with that disappointment:

It was one of those days
Of salvation and loss

Just one of those days
When you wait for the worst
First they hold you for a ransom
Then they buy you for a song

Just one of those days
When you laugh at what you've done
How they ripped you from the pages
Oh you waited for the best

It was one of those days
Of salvation and loss

The opening and closing couplet is suggestive but not terribly informative; is any day, for Low, not one of salvation and loss? Or for us? Should it be? But the middle is interesting, as ever since actually looking at the lyrics I believe I have for the first time in this blog an actual theory about a Low song I feel good about. It's pretty obvious, what with "ripped you from the pages" and holding the "you" in question for ransom, but I can't help feeling like Mimi's talking about Jesus Christ here. If Low have often written songs that express some level of bemused sympathy for unbelievers, they certainly have more common ground there than with people who claim to follow roughly the same belief system as Alan and Mimi but make a mockery of it. And neither of Low's songwriters strike me as Bible "literalists" (put in scare quotation marks because people who call themselves literalists in this field almost never are), which suggests that they, like most people since the monks of the Middle Ages, possess enough brains to interpret Scripture in a fairly coherent way. Which means the distortions it tends to get put through even when Secret Name came out are more than just infuriating as they are to me; that kind of thing must hurt.

But that, ultimately, is not really why I picked "Days Of..." and it's perfectly chosen ellipsis. Mimi fills in what it's a day of in the lyric but really it's evocative, in title and performance, of any of those days that just slides right by, where nothing happens in such great quantities that you barely get to the something you had planned. Days when you feel like a person in a book, waiting for someone to read you, and wondering why you can't just do that yourself. Like every bout of writer's block, I'm telling myself tomorrow will be better. If it isn't, I know what I'll be listening to.

Half Light

WEIRD FEELING
CAN'T EXPLAIN


I have never seen The Mothman Prophecies, and it's only years after I'd first heard Low's "Half Light" (which plays over the credits, apparently) that I've become intrigued about it. I always knew "Half Light" was from that movie when I downloaded it; the version you can hear in the video above is the single mix, and the MP3 I have is the near seven-minute end credits mix. It's even creepier, with someone (Alan? IMDB tells me they're by "Indrid Cold," but you'll forgive my skepticism) whispering away in the background in a way that makes headphone listening a little uncomfortable. The track, as might be guessed from the unusual-for-the-time attack and drum loop of "Half Light," is a collaboration with tomandandy who did the score which takes up the second disc(!) of the OST, which I am seriously considering putting a reservation in for at work. "Half Light" is a great track, and I'm at least mildly intrigued by the rest of the selections.

Tomandandy also, at least according to Wikipedia, "redefined the way in which music for media was created by appropriating aesthetics of the avant-garde and bringing them into pop culture" which is an idea I'm deeply, deeply ambivalent about. But on "Half Light" I'm happy enough with them - they mainly give Mimi a beat she can ride, as far as I can make out, and she does a fantastic job. Alan's guitar is similarly oddly satisfying, as coming over half a year before even Trust "Half Light" is further preliminary evidence that Low can do things assumed to be outside their zone of comfort/competance and in fact do them quite well. The loping beat and some of Mimi's backing vocals (at her spectral best) make me think of trip hop, but the rest of the track is too active and crunchy for that to really hold. It wouldn't really fit on any of Low's albums, and I'm not wholly surprised that the A Lifetime of Temporary Relief didn't grab either "Half Light," as it doesn't collect Low's other collaborations either (most notably the In the Fishtank disc with the Dirty Three).

"Half Light" isn't quite as creepy as some of Low's own songs, mainly because it seems to be trying to weird us out (although, yeah, "Indrid Cold" does get to me sometimes), but it's incredibly successful at the time I downloaded it (back when the movie came out, after hearing a snippet in an ad or something similar) as an expansion of the band's sound. I never thought this was the direction Low was moving in, and I'm not upset I was right about that, but anyone who thinks they only work one way or can only successfully make one type (or speed) of song should check out "Half Light."

Also, that video above? Was my first inkling, post Things We Lost in the Fire and Secret Name, of just how creepy Alan can be. In the context of the band's other albums and further examination of tracks like "Don't Understand" his demeanor in the "Half Light" clip would seem more in line with his normal persona, but at the time I mostly thought of him (and Low in general) as a fairly positive/reassuring/uplifting act, possibly in a kind of holdover from thinking of them as a Christian band. While Alan and Mimi's songs often manage to make me feel uplifted or similarly good, it's not because they're treacly or even very positive; "bleak" is probably an underused word to describe Low's music, even if that's at least partly because it runs the risk of being heard as a pejorative instead of the praise that it's intended to be. As for the video, I imagine the two of them had a lot of fun making it, not that they ever break what you might call character during the finished product. I like it, although it's not exactly wildly innovative.