Vinyl Diaries XIX: Low

Low
The Famous Spiegletent
January 17, 2008

Whatever the weather was doing outside the small confines of the Spiegletent, we had long forgotten. Wherever they go Minnesota's Low carry with them their own little micro-climate, a dry, static threat of a storm that refuses to break.

The wind comes up, ruffles our hair and swirling leaves and dust and torn up receipts, forgotten shopping lists and discarded love letters, but just as we try and grasp them - dancing within our reach - they are torn from our fingers.

There's nothing especially complex about what's going on here, and therein lies the secret. Alan Sparhawk's chord clusters brush up against Mimi Parker's spacious Mo Tucker drum patterns, with bass lines that never stray too far from a song's heart. Yet with each loop of an idea, each thematic return, every subtle scrape and tic has you holding your breath, your ears pricked for the menace that lurks just beyond the door.

There's a stark sense throughout of both claustrophobia and agoraphobia - Low leave you crouching in a creaking, paint-stripped shack while your thoughts of escaping into the world outside offers no respite. The tin roof pops and buckles from the heat, the blowing sand scouring the last skerricks of colour from the warping wooden boards only just holding together with rust shaped as nails.

Once a musical base is firmly bedded in, Sparhawk's voice cuts through with an alarming menace. Parched yet powerful, it is born of clenched teeth and a concrete jaw. Fourth-grade sweetheart and now wife Parker's voice, in contrast, offers a soothing, vibrating warmth that works in perfect counter-balance. In a set that works with so much nuance and such slight changes of sandy shade, the vocals are the main points of departure and were in beautiful form throughout.

Treating us to many of the strongest moments from Guns and Drums and a spattering of older works, the rapt audience watched from seat-edge in hushed expectation. Highlights included a near wistful 'Dragonfly', a pointed 'Pissing' and a gently drawn 'Belarus', with 'Sandanista' also an evocative delight.

Nothing came close, however, to the chilling offer made in 'Murderer' for "Someone to do your dirty work", and the unhinged, violent beauty of 'Take Your Time', which left the warm taste of blood from a bit lip rolling around in the mouth. We wonder as to "what it takes to get a bad mess out of a bad dress" as we sink our nails into whatever (or whomever) is near, unable to stand the slow torture of it all.

A torture I wouldn't trade for the world.