Home » Low’s strength is consistency – Giovanni Ansaldo

Low’s strength is consistency – Giovanni Ansaldo

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September 29, 2021 4:10 pm

Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker alone in their home in Duluth, in the United States, shrouded in twilight. The first colds have arrived, but winter, famous for being very rigid in those parts, is still quite far away. Sparhawk and Parker are husband and wife, they have been together since they were teenagers. They are very religious, of Mormon faith, and pray every day.

It looks like the biography of the classic American middle-class family: he is an employee, she is a housewife. But no. Since the early nineties Sparhawk and Parker are Low, one of the longest-running indie rock bands in recent American history. They started quietly, in the early nineties, growing record after record. The minimalist formula of their music (at the time the critics defined it slowcore) has evolved over time, redefining the very concept of rock together with producer Bj Burton in the beautiful Double negative, released in 2018. An album triumphantly received by international critics, which used recording techniques usually associated with pop (voice manipulation, sound compression) to create rock as experimental as it is enjoyable.

Even the new work of the band, HEY WHAT, continues on that trail. It’s made up of songs written on the guitar and played on the guitar, but it looks like an alien creature from another planet. It gives you few points of reference, aside from the voices, which sing as if they were one. Already the first song, White horses, opens with the echo of a distorted and manipulated guitar, driving the beautiful vocal melody sung by Sparhawk and Parker. In the finale the piece enters a loop, until it fades directly into I can wait, a song with an almost ambient tone. HEY WHAT that’s it, from start to finish. It is a record to be listened to as a single block, but it is catchy despite the adventurous arrangements. Indeed, net of the electronic loops and instrumental suites, it is an almost traditionalist work, with an ancient and folk heart.

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“I’ve always tried to make my guitar sound right. I love this tool. But this time the basic idea, a bit like in Double negative, was to make the guitar sound like it wasn’t a guitar. Technology and Bj Burton have helped me a lot in this process, ”says Sparhawk, while his long blonde hair almost completely covers his face almost completely. Seeing his eyes is practically impossible, between the semi-darkness of the rooms and the slightly grainy pixels from the link on Zoom. “Experimenting has become a necessity for us. Making records the same way over and over was getting frustrating, ”he adds.



For Low it was natural to continue in the wake of the previous album. “We wrote the songs in the usual way, sharing ideas and melodies spontaneously, without planning anything. This record is folk, but it also has a gospel soul. After all, we grew up singing hymns in church, it’s something that recurs cyclically in our music, ”explains Mimi Parker, who holds a black wool hat on her head. “When we went into the studio, and we started singing, we immediately got in tune. We understood that the voices had to be at the center of everything while in Double negative they were hidden in the sonic chaos. We have overturned the perspective: the voices in the center and the chaos below and around ”.

Some songs, like Days like these, have been influenced by the recent history of the United States: the election of Donald Trump, the racism and violence of the police, the demonstrations of Black Lives Matter, the pandemic. “When you think you’ve seen everything / you’ll find we’re living in days like these” “It was impossible to remain indifferent to everything around us: Trump and the fascists were everywhere: on TV, in the newspapers, on the street. Anyone who had any brains was terrified. It was absurd. Many of these songs start with the question: ‘Wow, how am I still alive? How did I not explode in a pool of blood? ‘ The protests of Black Lives Matters also inspired us. We realized that we privileged whites always have a choice, others don’t. The pandemic, on the other hand, is not very present in HEY WHAT. Most of the songs were written before, the emergency was underway when we went to the studio to record. But as always it was an unconscious process. It’s not like we sit down and say, ‘Okay, now let’s write a song about this thing.’ We don’t make protest music, we’ve never done it, we can’t do it, ”Sparhawk says.



Low will go on tour in the next few months. A concert in Italy is also scheduled for 12 May at the Teatro Duse in Bologna. And live will they reproduce all the sounds of the record only with guitar, bass and drums? Or are there any news? “We haven’t decided yet. We did a couple of gigs here on our farm doing everything the old fashioned way, drums, guitar and bass. It sounded very good, it had the right dynamics. We will probably keep it that way, it seems more honest to us. We have built a career on our ability to set ourselves limits. Using our hands and mouths to create sounds still feels like the right thing to do, even though we like to experiment in the studio, ”Mimi Parker replies.

The Low were born and raised in Duluth, the town where Bob Dylan was born. They never left it, despite the fact that they are now a cult group even outside the United States. “We are fine here. I’m friends with Rich Mattson, a very good local guitarist. With him we started Tired Eyes, a cover band of Neil Young, one of my favorite artists (in 2004 Low recorded a version of Down by the river along with Dirty Three, Warren Ellis’ band). We have fun, we play in the bars and restaurants of the city. With my 17-year-old son, on the other hand, I set up a funk project: we make pieces by Curtis Mayfield, Isley Brothers and Funkadelic. Our dream is to learn Sir Duke by Stevie Wonder, but it’s hard to play! ”.

Perhaps this is the strength of the Low, what drives their proudly independent sound research. The constancy. The fact that, net of everything, there remain a husband and a wife who have been together since they were teenagers. Of Mormon faith, very religious. As it says Don’t walk away, one of the most beautiful pieces of HEY WHAT: “I have slept beside you now / for what seems a thousand years”. I’ve slept by your side for what seems like a thousand years. But in Italian it doesn’t perform as well as in English.

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