It appears to be the season for artistic shifts and
changes in direction, what with Conor Oberst's recent
foray into electronica and the new …Trail of Dead opus.
Joining them in the departure lounge is the latest
album from Low, which is likely to provoke similarly
polarized listener reactions of delight and despair.
I
recall the experience of seeing Low live as
sometimes a bit frustrating — a struggle
unfolds between the band's music and audience
noise level, and the irreverent realities of the venue challenge the transcendental
properties
of
Low's sparse musical arrangements and harmonizing
vocals. Well, here
the songs on The Great Destroyer provide their own
solution, because, consistently, the band throws some
altogether tougher shapes and embraces a lean rock
aesthetic. Audience chatter isn't going to be much of
a match for these songs.
On one level, this is the sound of Low getting angry,
channeling a frustration with America's rightward
cultural and political shift into songs where a sense
of bitterness and resignation is palpable. Though
often elliptical, the lyrics here are shot through
with a sense of despair, dread and angry futility.
Part of this band's original charm was how it seemed
to be semi-detached from any easily classifiable
cultural context. Now, however, The Great Destroyer
seems agonizingly apt for the times — when Alan
Sparhawk sings "Every day you torture us, you torture
us, you torture us/ Nothing stays together" on
"Everybody's Song," it resonates acutely. The overall
gloom of this lyrical prognosis, however, is
ultimately tempered by a calmer viewpoint, an abstract
spirituality that more boldly makes itself felt towards the album's close.
The opening synth tone and low-level riff of "Monkey"
combine to provide a tautly dynamic structure upon
which the unmistakable vocal harmonies of Sparhawk and Mimi Parker build. It's
not so much about
volume itself as the promise of volume, a perpetuated
state of tense readiness. It sounds dark, lyrics
heavy with threat: "Tonight you will be mine/ Tonight
the monkey dies." "California" follows, sparking up
with a propulsive riff that's almost shockingly
conventional, but again the song is given a more
idiosyncratic shading by the accompanying harmony
vocals. Completing the opening salvo is "Everybody's
Song"; with its shredded rhythm guitar and a
relentless tom-tom beat, it confirms the shift in
outlook, building on the first two tracks' momentum
and breaking the music wide open.
"Silver Rider" confirms that they even sound "louder"
on the gentler songs, with a crackling current of
harnessed electric energy simmering beneath a lilting
country-rock melody. Again the change isn't so much
from turning up the volume as it is in the willingness
to embrace more generic song forms — sometimes The
Great Destroyer almost sounds like a collection of
obscure covers as the band navigates through different
musical styles. And "Silver Rider" also exemplifies
the particular sense of pessimism that permeates this
album, expounding on the failure of some kind of
savior — "Nobody dreamed you'd save the world" — and
ending with the refrain "Sometimes your voice is not
enough."
"On the Edge of" and "Step" both sound torn and
frayed, layered with distorted, Crazy Horse-style
guitar. The hushed, gentle harmonies reveal lyrics
concerned with a kind of existential dread, a fear of
obliteration, apocalypse. Contrastingly, "Just Stand
Back" and "Broadway (So Many People)" highlight a
poppier sensibility, combining melodic boldness with a
haunting lyrical undertow. "When I Go Deaf" brazenly
knits the band's past and present together, with its
stark, spacious beginning eventually exploding into a
spiraling, noisy guitar climax. The closing
resignation of the lyrics, however, at least offers a
kind of metaphor of redemptive calm:
"When I go deaf/ I won't even mind/ I'll be all right/ I'll
be just fine."
Low's use of noise, and its filling in of the spaces
that used to hover around the band's exquisitely
fragile songs, is a marked departure, but here it
sounds somehow inevitable. They still retain a unique
identity even as they plunder and explore more generic
alt-rock themes, and their particular skill is in
making this transformation seem logical and welcome.
But while the shift in musical arrangement is towards
one kind of openness, of increased access to Low's
world, at the same time The Great Destroyer's songs
touch on darkness and rage, reflecting the outer
turmoil of the world even as the world is being
beckoned in. "Death of a Salesman" is a narrative
about the struggle to produce art in this outside
world, and while its protagonist gives in to the
pressures of daily life — "I burnt my guitar in a
rage" — ultimately there's redemption: "But
the fire came to rest/ In your white velvet breast/ So
somehow I just know that it's safe."
Low manage to transform themselves and our expectations of them
as they transmit messages of light ringed by
darkness. Whatever spirituality lingers here, it's
digestible because of its abstracted realism. "Walk
Into the Sea" closes the album with the lines, "Yeah,
time's the great destroyer/ Leaves every child a
bastard/ But when it finally takes us over/ I hope we
float away together."
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