So I have a bit of a thing for Low: they're the only band besides the Beatles of whom I own their complete discography; I've written obsessive primers for all their albums; I've waxed rhapsodic on individual songs; and I've performed theological analyses of their aesthetics, as only a fanboy can. Which is a wee ironic since I've only been into them since 2010.
For they already had senior-statesman status in the indie-world by then you see--a kind of classic rock for the Pitchfork crowd. They'd been kickin' around since the Alternative heyday of early-90s (back when Nirvana and Pearl Jam were the fresh-faced voice of the future, to put that in perspective), and by 2010 already had a hauntingly long string of critically-acclaimed albums in their wake. Their legacy was secure, their career more or less finished--or so I thought. Indeed, as they were already coming up on 4 years since their last new album, it appeared they were settling into retirement themselves. When I first began collecting their discs (initially just in a desperate quest to find Christmas music I don't hate), I approached them as yet another Classic Rock act I got into tardy, having been born just a generation too late.
Then in 2011 they roared back to life with C'mon; it split the difference between the austere minimalism of the first half of their career and the sprawling grandeur of their second, and seemed to provide the perfect coda to their long and illustrious career. At the time I was just glad I got to see them fresh in action one last time.
Only for them to promptly release The Invisible Way a scant 2 years later; of course, the occasion then was the official 20th anniversary of their formation. Indeed, pretty much every outlet that reviewed it--NPR, Pitchfork, AV Club, Stereogum, New York Times, etc--felt the need to comment on the sheer astounding fact of the band's longevity, of how much staggering variety they'd managed to explore within such an aggressively limiting formula. Yet Invisible Way, in its back-to-basics approach and acoustic elegance, still felt like the album wherein they finally transitioned to Legacy status.
But now barely two more years have passed and they bequeath us Ones and Sixes, and is a complete shift from the last album. By now it should be clear: this band has no intention of stopping, not now nor in the near future. In fact, what should be astounding is that we ever thought they would fizzle out in the first place--because, holy crap guys, just glance over their discography, Low is friggin' prolific!
The slowness of their songs perhaps makes you forget how fast they crank 'em out; but just within their first 6 years of existence--'93 to '99--they released not one, not two, but four different LPs, along with three EPs! That is more than one album a year, not even counting that first year when they were still shopping demos around.
The next 6 years were no less productive: from '99 to '05, they produced another 3 LPs, an EP collaboration with Dirty Three, a live-album, a soundtrack to a non-existent film, a contribution to an actual film soundtrack, and released a 3-disc B-sides collection! Amidst that flurry, they even released their most acclaimed album ever--2001's Things We Lost In The Fire--something they could have rested their laurels on, toured heavily behind, made their climactic statement with...only to then release Trust barely a year later. Guys, their slowcore aesthetic had us fooled--they are neither relaxed nor subdued, but are an incredibly restless band!
2005's The Great Destroyer, what with its amped up guitars and heavy distortion, was the album that supposedly broke them out of their minimalist mode in one self-destructive fury--indeed, Pitchfork at the time even theorized the CD as Low's epitaph...
Only for Low to casually drop their electronica experiment Drums and Guns 2 years later. And its not like they took a breather in the 4 years between that and C'mon--for in that interim frontman Alan Sparhawk produced not 1 but 2 albums with his side-project Retribution Gospel Choir. And guys, it wasn't even his first side-project.
It's clear by now that there is nothing "Legacy" about Low--they are a band that is perpetually living in the present moment. I now recognize that in 2010 I was not getting into some sort of Classic Indie Rock when I got into Low, no--I was only getting caught midstream in their ever-rushing current. Like a river rolling wild beneath the ice, I had gravely mistaken stillness for stasis.
For what Low has done with Ones and Sixes is a total left turn from their last 2 albums; it is matter-of-factly pulled off with a blithe disregard for the retro-rock that immediately preceded it, as though they had made no grand-finales or 20-year statements, as though they were still a young band on their 3rd or 4th album, just trying out whatever pops in their heads and seeing what sticks. In spirit, Ones and Sixes draws closest to 2007's Drums and Guns in its electronica atmospherics--in fact, it practically picks up where Drums and Guns left off without missing a pre-programmed beat, as though only a year had passed, instead of 8. Indeed, it almost feels like the LP that should have naturally followed in 2008 or '09, rather than the more guitar-heavy C'mon that eventually came out instead.
But this is all to think too linearly, as though you can map any sort of "progression" or "evolution" onto them--again, Low is a band that is radically uninterested in both the past and the future, caring only for the immediate present. As Sparhawk himself states in the album's promo materials: "I’ve learned that no matter how escapist, divergent, or even transcendent the creative process feels, the result is more beholden to what is going on at the moment. It’s hard to admit that one is so influenced by what is in front of us. Doesn’t it come from something magical and far away? No, it comes from here. It comes from now. I’m not going to tell you what this record is about because I have too much respect for that moment when you come to know it for yourself." The here, the now, is always the space that Low occupies. The deliberate pace and minimalism of their music is specifically intended to slow you down, clear your mind, and make you fully cognizant of the immediate moment you are always inhabiting.
Hence, to seek progression in the music of Low is a fool's errand, for past and future collapse into one, and all is as one day with Low, and time only is measured unto men. It is as easy for Low to produce an electronica album in 2015 as it was in 2007, for they occupy the same moment--just as the amped-up guitars of 2011's C'mon were an easy companion to 2005's The Great Destroyer, as though no time had passed at all, as though the radical-departure Drums and Guns had not come in between.
I suspect that in the future, it is equally possible for them to still write a companion-in-spirit to 2001's Things We Lost In The Future--or to Songs for a Dead Pilot--or to Secret Name--or even I Could Live In Hope. Shoot, of all older bands I still listen to, they are the ones I am most confident could still do something completely new we haven't even heard yet, as though they were still 21 and playing with a 4-track in the garage, as though no time had passed, as though there were no time at all.
The adjective "timeless" gets thrown around pretty carelessly, but in its most precise definition applies perfectly to Low: their music doesn't age poorly because it has no age; Drums and Guns for example still feels as vital today as it did in the late-Iraq War that produced it, for Low's is not music locked into a single historical or cultural moment, but rather into the very moment that you yourself listen to it in. It is music that is always produced in the moment, no matter how many years ago it was recorded. It is timeless the same way silence is timeless, the same way eternity is timeless. It's on Ones and Sixes that I at last understood this about Low.
Oh, and the second half of penultimate track "Landslide"? The most pristinely beautiful thing you've heard in forever...
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