low’s harmonising duo on taking a jagged turn: “There was a lot of room for change…”
why did you want to return to april Base and work with BJ Burton again?
alan Sparhawk: The last record went really well, and in the process of doing that one we got to know each other more and got a better feel for each other’s tendencies. We learned a lot about how we worked together and got a sense that we could go further with it. As we were finishing Ones And Sixes, we were talking about parameters and ideas for the next one.
mimi Parker: I think it was a really natural continuation. We started heading down a road with BJ, and we knew we wanted to get to the end of the road. We didn’t know how we were going to get there, but it was going to be with him.
it’s such a huge departure for Low, especially 25 years into the life of the band.
aS: It’s not interesting making something that you already know what it sounds like in your head. The fun of being in the studio is pushing beyond your expectations and surprising yourself. You have some goals as you go in, but you learn pretty quickly that you never get exactly what you want. The best you can do is prepare: think about stuff, rehearse things, work through songs. Then you go in and hope you’re surprised. You hope it goes beyond your imagination. I think that’s been the key to our longevity, and we’re lucky to have fans who expect that and are used to us trying new things and evolving.
mP: We were about as minimal as you could get, so there was a lot of room for change. Right away we knew the key was to keep pushing ourselves and even making ourselves uncomfortable if we had to. So far it’s paid off, in that we’ve been able to keep it interesting. But we’re still figuring it out. I mean literally we’re still figuring out how we’re going to play these songs.
aS: The challenge of making something out of very little will give you a lot of room to evolve. Having every possibility at your fingertips is stifling. The fact that we had limited parameters and limited goals helped us a lot. Early on it was about what can we do with this, but it soon became what else can we do with this. I feel lucky that we had those limitations.
mP: We’ve always had the two voices, mine and Alan’s, and I guess those have maybe been the constants. We realised that we’re always going to have those, which means we’re always going to be recognised as Low.
Even on this record, the voices take a while to come into focus. They sound so abraded on the record.
aS: That was part of the conversation as we were making the record. We were very conscious of the voice – when it should be really clear and obvious and when it should be very vague. You take a risk and you hope that somehow it makes sense and that the higher thing you’re trying to reach hopefully comes through. It doesn’t always work, but you hope.
working on this record and working in these different parameters, did your roles within the band change?
mP: I didn’t play as much drums. I’m not that precious about my instrument, so I was willing to step aside and let these guys experiment a little bit with the rhythms.
aS: We spent a lot more time arranging and thinking about the movement of the songs. We had played the songs at home and we had rehearsed them, but in the studio there was not as much time spent doing takes. Instead, we were constantly revising and editing things. Steve [Garrington], our bass player, is really pretty crucial in helping with arrangements. He’s definitely the person who would play any keyboard parts that were more complicated than just a few notes.
There’s an interesting dynamic between the words and music, as though the music is trying to evoke something very specific. it’s maybe not an explicitly political album, but it does sound very current.
aS: I think “current” may be a good way to put it, because it’s not just politics. It’s human existence. What are we as humans dealing with right now? But we don’t say: “Oh, this is going on in the world, let’s write about this.” You just write. And what comes out ends up being a reflection of what’s going on around you, even if it seems completely random process when you’re writing. It’s not so much what’s going on in the world as much as what’s going on in us. It’s more than just: “What’s going on?” It’s: “What’s happening to us?”
it sounds less explicit in that regard than 2005’s Drums And
Guns, which sounded like a reaction to the war in iraq.
mP: Those are the more successful albums, where it kind of connects with you without dictating too much.
aS: At our rehearsals, we’ll rehearse for two hours and maybe get through only four or five songs, because the rest of the time we’re talking about stuff, sharing things we’ve read, even consoling each other. It’s nice to have this family and this creative unit, and maybe that’s the hope: that you have a few people that you can really communicate deeply with and express your honest feelings. There’s a strength that comes from being on the same page.
“I was willing to step aside and let these guys experiment a little bit with the rhythms” mimi PaRkER