Low: Minimal Aesthetic, Delightfully Weird
The pride of Duluth, Minn. for twenty years, Low's sound is perhaps best described by singer and guitarist Alan Sparhawk, who wrote on the band's Web site: “We’ve made many records, and you know our M.O.: slow, quiet, sometimes melancholy, and, we hope, sometimes pretty.”
Low's latest and tenth record, The Invisible Way, is all of those things -- but with a fresh take.
“I think it’s a little different,” says drummer and vocalist Mimi Parker. “We’re not the same people. We’ve certainly changed, everybody does. But at the same time, we’re the same people. It’s the same voices, it’s the same kind of minimal aesthetic."
Low performs live in the Soundcheck studio, and Sparhawk and Parker reflect on two decades of playing music together.
Set List
- "Plastic Cup"
- "Holy Ghost"
- "Clarence White"
Sparhawk, on collaborating with Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, who produced The Invisible Way at Wilco's Chicago loft studio:
“We’ve known Jeff and the band for a few years, especially [guitarist] Nels Cline a number of years back. [Wilco has] a great studio there, [and] they kind of put the bug in our ear a few years ago. We finally stopped by one day when we were going through Chicago and really just fell in love with the place and the sounds that they were getting there, especially while they were working on this Mavis Staples record. He was just the perfect engineer for achieving what we’ve sort of always been shooting for.”
Parker, on taking more of a leading role on several songs from The Invisible Way:
"Honestly, Alan was kind of encouraging me to write more and take more of that lead vocal. It was the right time, I had enough time to work on songs, and it just fell together."
Sparhawk, on the difficulty of starting a low-key band at the height of the 1990's:
“I think history probably looks back at that time as the "Grunge Era," but really what happened with Nirvana and that sort of explosion [was that it] basically opened the door for a lot of independent bands to go out and tour. Suddenly, people were excited by weird music. And there was a couple years there where it really brought people out. It was really an ideal time to start a band.”
