Low – I Could Live In Hope
By Mark Dohmann
| Label: | Plain Recordings – Plain 175 |
|---|---|
| Format: | 2 × Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue |
| Country: | US |
| Released: | 1994 with Reissue 2011 |
| Genre: | Rock |
| Style: | Indie Rock |
If James Dean had lived, this would be his band.
How does one look forward to a night of “sad” music in a concert hall packed with serious music heads? How can one feel “happy” afterwards and rave about the amazing music?
I guess the secret’s out
Like a river flow
It’s never over done
Out of control
I guess my secret’s out
My simple goal
You’ll be the one, too
Out of control
Out of control
Out of control
Out of my control
Out of control
I guess the secret’s out
Above me looking down, down, down
It’s not supposed to be that way
Out of control
Out of control
Out of control
Out of control
Out of control
Out of control
Out of control
Out of…
(Taken from the track Down from the album I Could Live in Hope)
The Recital Centre in Melbourne’s art precinct is a relatively new performance space (when compared to the Palais and Forum). Fortunately the acoustics in the building are well suited to acoustic and semi acoustic performances.
Melbourne’s music scene has a reputation for being artist friendly and paying attention to the work during performances. That the audience delivers standing ovations and continues to compliment the music as they exit the facility means the band must be impressive. This is a knife edge as the same crowd will quickly communicate if a performance is “off”.
Bands like Low can take advantage of these natural acoustics as their work is quiet and sparse with loads of reverb. The Melbourne crowd are of course familiar with Low and Dirty Three (Warren Ellis, Mick Turner and Jim White) who played on several albums together. Warren Ellis is likely familiar with fans of Nick Cave as he often tours with the Bad Seeds in current guise.
Low might also be familiar to Robert Plant fans on Decca Lable “Band of Joy”. The original is a huge crowd pleaser in concert (apologies for the low res recording which can only be fixed by seeing the band live or listening to KEXP Radio)
Low formed in 1993 around the husband-wife duo of Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker, Low have produced eleven albums (including 2015’s Ones & Sixes), recorded with Steve Albini, collaborated with the Dirty Three and had their songs recorded by Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant for his Grammy nominated Band of Joy album and used by clothing manufacturer GAP for a TV advert.
Some found them a reaction to the abrasiveness of alternative rock in the early 1990s, when grunge had reigning popularity, Low “eschewed conventional song writing in favour of mood and movement.” Influenced by Brian Eno and Joy Division, the band, working with long-time producer and New York underground mainstay Mark Kramer, favoured slow-paced compositions, a minimum of instrumentation and an economy of language.
“For more than two decades, Low have experimented with the intricacies and finer details of music. In a musical landscape of overindulgence and audio compression, it certainly makes a change to hear a band for whom every strum and drumbeat sounds delicately poised.” – The Guardian
Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker a husband and wife team who accompanied by a bass player form a trio in Low are characterized by slow tempos and minimalist arrangements.
Early descriptions sometimes referred to it as a rock subgenre called “slowcore” which the band themselves eschew. I hear a lot of Neil Young influences in their work. I’m therefore preprogramed to like the work of Low.
Mimi on vocals uses a single snare drum, bass tom and single cymbal. Sparhawk on guitar provides harmony and vocal on compositions which have defied popular convention since 1993.
Parker and Sparhawk’s vocal harmonies represent perhaps the group’s most distinctive element; critic Denise Sullivan writes that their shared vocals are “as chilling as anything Gram and Emmylou ever conspired on—though that’s not to say it’s country-tinged, just straight from the heart.” Their 1994 debut album I Could Live in Hope, created the prototypical “slowcore” album.
The band formed in the spring of 1993. Sparhawk had been playing in the Superior, Wisconsin band Zen Identity, the core of which was formed by drummer Robb Berry and vocalist Bill Walton. That band needed a new bassist and recruited future Low bassist John Nichols. At that time, Nichols was a senior at Superior Senior High School, and bassist in the band Lorenzo’s Tractor. Sparhawk taught Zen Identity songs to Nichols and during practices, the two started improvising with some very modest, quiet themes.
As a joke, they wondered what would happen if they played such quiet music in front of Duluth crowds, which at that point focused around the loud, grunge, “post-punk” sound. Soon, the joke became a serious thought. Sparhawk left Zen Identity, who continued to perform and record without him, and he and Nichols recruited Sparhawk’s wife Mimi Parker to play a very modest drum kit composed of a single snare drum, single cymbal, and a single floor tom. She was to use brushes almost exclusively rather than drum sticks.
Low’s debut album, I Could Live in Hope, was released on Virgin Records’ Vernon Yard imprint in 1994. It featured Nichols on bass, though he was replaced by Zak Sally, who joined for the recording of the band’s next album Long Division. Both I Could Live in Hope and Long Division were produced and recorded by Kramer. Long Division and its similar follow-up, 1996’s The Curtain Hits the Cast, established the band as critical darlings; extensive touring helped them to develop a highly devoted fan base.
The following year saw the release of the band’s final full-length on Kranky, Trust. All three of the band’s full-length releases on Kranky featured superstar producers: Secret Name and Things We Lost in the Fire feature the work of recording engineer Steve Albini, who proved sympathetic to capturing the band’s strengths; while Trust was recorded by Tom Herbers along with Duluth engineer Eric Swanson and mixed by Tchad Blake at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios.
Some have described Low as a form of indie-rock that is slower than slow, with glacial rhythms and delicately picked guitars that take a seeming eternity to unfold. Careful listening reveals the use of space between the notes as a powerful as the melody itself to create music that is contemplative, hypnotic and sublime. Low will force you to sit down and get “inside” their songs. Because each note and element is so sparse everything becomes important. Nothing is wasted.The vocal harmonies of Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker perfectly support each other on individual lines to lead the listener along a journey.
I Could Live in Hope received generally positive reviews from contemporary music critics. Writing for The Chicago Tribune, Greg Kot felt that “its heavy-lidded drama creeps by in all-enveloping slow motion” and called it “the best record made for those dreary, nothing’s-going-on-and-I-want-to-crawl-into-a-hole afternoons since Galaxie 500’s debut.”
Pitchfork placed I Could Live in Hope at number 49 on its 1999 list of the best albums of the 1990s. The same year, critic Ned Raggett ranked it at number 37 on his list of “The Top 136 or So Albums of the Nineties” for Freaky Trigger. In 2004, the album was included in Les Inrockuptibles’ “50 Years of Rock’n’Roll” list. In 2018, Pitchfork placed it at number 22 on its list of the 30 best dream pop albums. Their first album is worth the effort to explore as it can open the vistas into a beautiful sublime world of “sad” music from Low that can be very “uplifting”.
I’m still trying to figure out the reason for this (my good friend Prof Neil McLachlan at Melbourne Uni has been working on new models for hearing and is postulating it is related to the “feel good” chemicals like dopamine we audiophiles are known to be able to self-generate on hearing music).
Perhaps it might be that sadness you can feel in the music can be coupled with the happiness you feel on learning the reissue now fetches over $500 for the LP (shades of Cinematic Orchestra Live at the Albert Hall Double Live Album here).
If you suffer like me from the same affliction then Low is “like sugar for the pill” (Apologies for a cheeky dreampop reference for fellow fans;-)
Track listing
A1 Words 5:50
A2 Fear 2:16
A3 Cut 5:48
A4 Slide 3:51
B1 Lazy 5:39
B2 Lullaby 9:30
C1 Sea 1:50
C2 Down 7:29
C3 Drag 5:16
D1 Rope 6:17
D2 Sunshine 2:59