Low - London Koko, 27/7/06
5/5
By: Thomas Hannan
'Play a slow one!
It's a fantastic heckle. A browse through the accompanying programme to this now annual series of Don't Look Back events, where All Tomorrow's Parties festival dons request of beloved artists that they replicate their personal favourite albums in their entirety in concert, reveals a critique of the album we're about to be party to, Low's masterpiece 'Things We Lost In The Fire', and in it a reminder of just quite how relaxed the pace of the trio's music is. Remember - this is a band who formed with the intention of playing as slowly and as quietly as possible, one who legend has it would actually turn the volume of their instruments down if faced with an audience who weren't paying enough attention. Fast and raucous has little role to play in Low's music.
Nor does it in their attitude. That opening outburst was in reply to singer / guitarist Alan Sparhawk wondering if anyone had any requests. His rebuttal was even wittier.
'A slow one? We'll get round to it...'
Asking for requests itself was a bit of a giggle, as the band here find themselves contractually obliged, for the second (less heavily attended, sadly) night in a row, to play the album as it appears in the record stores. They shan't be playing 'California' just yet. And sticking to the tracklisting isn't Low's only way of honouring 'Things We Lost in The Fire' tonight - the chap who mixed the record is also doing the live sound, the fellow on keyboards for the LP shows up to play in the flesh... all it needed was for Bob Weston of Shellac to turn up to parp his trumpet on the incredible 'Dinosaur Act' (a stunning rendition of it tonight cementing its position in our estimation as a bone fide alternative rock masterwork), and it'd almost be like being in the studio during its recording.
Except this doesn't feel like a band rehearsing, or one devoid of feeling. Sparhawk for example, recovering from well documented mental health problems which we won't go in to here (he's much better, that's all you need to know), looks always on the verge of collapse, about to utterly despise the state of the world, clinging on to the edge of control by his soaring voice and delicately stroked twelve string. Mimi Parker, his wife and drummer, may look thoroughly bored with being in a rock band between songs, but during their playing becomes totally enraptured with the whole experience, her demeanour lifting with every high note she effortlessly touches, none more masterfully that those uttered on the so-sparse-it's-barely-even-there cooing of 'Laser Beam'.
'Things We Lost in the Fire' is an incredible album, one that flows effortlessly, is digestible only as a whole and, amongst its introspective soul searching, in things like 'Sunflower', 'A Forest' and 'In Metal', has itself some genuinely classic moments as constituent parts. Watching it be delivered was an honour, but somehow even these heights of brilliance were transcended come the final song of the second encore (where the band just got to play what the hell they wanted), when 'When I Go Deaf' erupted like an attempt to wake the dead. It, and what lead up to it, wasn't just a reminder of the merits of Low, 'Things We Lost...' or any other one thing in particular. It was a reminder of how good music itself, of whatever pace and volume, has the capacity to be.
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