On 2005’s The Great Destroyer, Low fused innovative instrumentation and highly detailed and layered production, with the band’s signature vocal harmonies, resulting in one of the most memorable post-rock albums of the decade.
Some tens years later, Low came to perfect their sadcore sound, becoming much slower, leaning toward an introspective mien, a combination that culminates on Ones and Sixes, an album teeming with a ghostly, almost haunted house allure.
On their newest release, Double Negative, the Duluth three-piece continues their career-long sonic experiment by trying to maintain their vocal chemistry and avant-rock sound while ratcheting up the noise, and suddenly, the whole thing falls apart.
The Great Destroyer stands as worthy of mention because it is Low’s first on Sub Pop and the dawn of an amazing, six-album run on the major indie-rock label. Prior to 2005, Low produced a long string of records on smaller labels, an obscure and fertile time full of experimentation, honing sound, and figuring out what work and what doesn’t.
Anyone who has listened to Low knows what works. Alan Sparhawk and his wife/band mate Mimi Parker make great music, particularly splendid vocal harmonies, with the former counted one of the truly luminary guitar players in alt-rock. Throughout all of their dreamy experimentation, those two core aspects have been the ballast to what can sometimes feel like esoteric deviations.
Whenever I find myself inclined to review an album (especially one I’m down on, like this one) by looking back in the rearview mirror at the band’s past, I feel like I’m missing something. It’s difficult for me though, especially on Double Negative, to remark on what’s here. So much of my feeling about the record is about what’s missing, and that has forced me back to Low’s catalog for assurances.
Better than saying those elements are missing though, it feels more like everything on this album emanates from behind a veil. However gorgeous Sparhawk and Parker’s harmonies are, for example, on “Dancing and Blood,” which opens with a heat-wresting pulsation, they’re vague, almost blunted. The track feels like a sinewy, organic phenomenon pummeled by a pulsing layer of noise, an aggravation that endures throughout the track list on “Pool Sucker” and “Rome (In The Dark”). If you just look past the excess, there’s a weather-beaten layer of beauty underwriting the rest.
A track like “Fly” may be vintage Low, vocals laying in over the sheen of synthesizers, but the competition, again, is a distraction. The opener, “Quorum” is muddy, the ripples of distortion taking the heart right out of the album before it gets going. This album isn’t particularly sad, and the slow aspect becomes a grind. On Double Negative, a resplendent track like “Spanish Translation” (from Ones and Sixes) with all of its gorgeously transcendent revelations would simply get lost in the convoluted mix.
The slow and sad blend of post-rock that Low has consistently brought to the table relies, I believe, on two elements in tandem: an articulate build and reveal. The way that these tracks are produced, though, the necessary pairing of tension and release is lost on my ear. Uncharacteristically, my favorite tracks on this album (what I would characterize as the interludes “The Son, The Son”) wouldn’t even register on any other Low album. Ultimately, Double Negative doesn’t feel like a particularly memorable post-rock album. Nor does it satisfy as a fan of the chance-taking trio.
Low deserves to stumble on a record like this one, I suppose. At least, I feel like they’ve earned the opportunity to explore how noise fits in with their bleak, autumnal, lush sounds. Here’s hoping the next phase, however, is more like the old ones.
