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Joseph Unrein
So, I mentioned that the new Low album is coming out next week in my previous post. Since I'm 98% certain I'm going to do a post about it sometime late next week, I thought I'd do a bit on the rest of their albums and the band in general.
Low is composed of Singer/Guitarist Alan Sparhawk, his wife Singer/Drummer Mimi Parker, and Bassist Steve Garrington. Sparhawk and Parker are members of the Mormon faith, and are quite active in the LDS church. Sparhawk also runs a recording studio in his hometown of Duluth, Minnesota. Also, I'm intentionally overusing his name because it sounds cool. Alan Sparhawk. Totally awesome.
iTunes classifies Low as "slowcore." I'm not really sure what that means. A lot of their songs are very minimalist, and have somewhat slow tempos, focusing more on the composition and the emotions conveyed by the music. I have a mix of some of their stuff with Sigur Ros, a bit of Snow Patrol, some Horse Feathers and Mazzy Star just to give you some perspective as to their sound.
With 8 albums it's pretty hard to give a succinct impression of each individually. The new album I will say is considerably more upbeat than the rest, particularly the most recent "Drums & Guns" which is pretty dark, and more or less a criticism of the War in Iraq. I considered not mentioning that particular point just to avoid starting a political argument, but I think it's pretty obvious within the album itself and I don't think the band made any effort to hide it.
Anyway, that's just a quick overview of the band. You can find all this info in the wikipedia page, and a lot more info on their webpage. Take a look, listen to some of their stuff, and if you like it, you can get any of their albums through the online store. Personal recommendations, "The Curtain Hits the Cast", "The Great Destroyer", and of course, the new album "C'mon" which will be available on Tuesday, 4/12. You can listen to the stream of the new album on npr.org.
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