:: Track Listing

1. Pretty People
2. Belarus
3. Breaker [MP3]
4. Dragonfly
5. Sandinista
6. Always Fade
7. Dust on the Window
8. Hatchet
9. Take Your Time
10. Your Poison
11. In Silence
12. Murderer
13. Violent Past

:: Record Review

Low

Drums and Guns
(Sub Pop; 2007)

Rating: 67%
Combined Rating: 67%


Alan Sparhawk’s personal breakdown, which cut short the tour for Low’s last album, The Great Destroyer (2005), has become about as public as any indie rock figure, particularly one as unassuming as Sparhawk, could ever hope (or fear) to be. His interview with Pitchfork is one of those rare moments in music journalism where an artist seems to completely let down his guard and Sparhawk displayed a sense of vulnerability, humility, and honesty that made it almost painful to read. He struck me as an artist whose heightened sensitivity was simultaneously attacking his faith, his personal life, and his musical career.

Perhaps it’s a projection, but this sense of crisis -- and the inevitable weariness that accompanies it -- pervades Drums and Guns. Many of the songs -- “Pretty People” and “Murderer” in particular -- sound like they come from the perspective of someone in agonizing despair, even on the brink of insanity. On the latter track, Sparhawk offers himself to God as a killer, seething with bitterness and sarcasm: “Seems like you could use another fool / Well I’m cool.” In another context, the song might be a rather obvious criticism of fundamentalist politics, but given Sparhawk’s religious background and the weight of his direct delivery it comes closer to one of King David’s more anguished Psalms without the acknowledgement of God’s ultimate compassion. Sparhawk seems to hover between self-deprecating prostration and complete disavowal of his faith; needless to say, you’d be hard pressed to find a more tormented moment on anything released this year (presuming Scott Walker isn’t making another album anytime soon).

All this sounds like a recipe for really substantial, harrowing music but unfortunately this sense of crisis and uncertainty invades the music as well as the subject matter, making Drums and Guns, Low’s second consecutive attempt to break their mould, another wildly uneven affair. While The Great Destroyer attempted to pave new ground by amping the volume and speed of their songs, Drums and Guns is, to some degree, a return to their slower and sparser earlier work augmented with a complete technical overhaul. While the original Low formula consisted mostly of reverb-tinged guitar, bass, a stripped-down drum kit and harmonies between Sparhawk and his wife/drummer Mimi Parker, here these elements are supplemented with a variety of electronics which tend to take precedence over any distinct instrumentation. The use of electronics doesn’t necessarily interfere with the band’s signature sound anymore than the increased volume did on The Great Destroyer. Rather, what brings down both albums is an attempt to traverse more overtly pop terrain, which in the case of Drums and Guns often seems awkwardly at odds with the rawness of Sparhawk’s lyrics. The sounds used on the album are admirably spare but they don’t work in the same way that more organic instrumentation did for their earlier work. While a single strum on a guitar used to resonate with ghostly clarity, a few electronic tweaks sound hollow, leaving the vocals to carry the weight of the songs on their own. Take “Always Fade,” a song hopelessly bleak in its lyrics but covered in drum machines and a downtempo groove that not only clashes with the subject matter but makes it sound like the band is trying to lighten the emotional burden of the song.

This doesn’t mean that a track like “Murderer” sounds any less dark than I’ve suggested and, if anything, the production makes it even more discomforting, though restless and awkwardly so. The emotion is one of bitterness and resignation, which seems accidental given that many of the songs concern themselves with global issues (the title itself is taken from a book by Martin Wallace about the conflict in Northern Ireland. Compare "Are you filled with anger? / Are you filled with lust?" ("Lust," from The Curtain Hits the Cast [1996]) with "All you pretty people / Are all gonna die," from the opening track of Drums and Guns. “Dragonfly” could have been a good song, but when you realize it’s about how people are dragonflies, and therefore, shouldn’t have to take pills because…well, “There’s no such thing as dragonfly pills,” it’s preposterous to the point of self-parody. The worst offender here, however, is “Hatchet,” presumably directed towards a rival band, where Sparhawk sings “Let’s bury the hatchet like the Beatles and the Stones.” For a band who have made their best music shrouded in themes from Kierkegaard where every word seems to carry immense spiritual gravity, the track finds the band blatantly playing against their strengths; Parker’s harmonies overtop sound like she’s embarrassed to be singing it. Dressed with irritating drum machines and guitar fills which are too minimal to actually give the song a groove (which seems to be what Low are attempting to do), it stinks of a band self-consciously trying to downplay their seriousness, playfully elbowing you and saying, hey, “Your records sound a lot like mine.” Given that it’s the only song on here not to directly reference war, violence, depression or decay, its inclusion on the album is glaring.

The only other song that manages to break out of Sparhawk’s grim introspections is “Dust on the Window”; incidentally, the only song that Parker takes lead vocals on. It’s nice to see her in the forefront again, if only briefly, after being completely relegated to backing vocals on The Great Destroyer. The song isn’t anything particularly new for her, but her calmer reflections provide a good counterpoint to Sparhawk’s more devastating delivery and the ending finds some interesting processed harmonica which stands out amid the often un-inspired electronics. There are a few other moments where the production manages to complement the songs: “Belarus” stands out with Kid A-like backwards vocals, tinny percussion, and staccato string parts that actually synchronize with the song rather than sound like they were added in post. Apart from this track, Drums and Guns succeeds when it keeps the electronic intrusions to a minimum, as on “Breaker” and "In Silence," instead of trying to give the songs a lite-funk sheen. Better still is when the production is used to add droning textures rather than canned rhythms, as on the layers of vocals on “Take Your Time.”

In the band’s defence, it still feels like producer Dave Fridmann, who came on board with The Great Destroyer, still has no idea what to do with them. He only manages to push the muddy distortion which crippled their last album on the final track, “Violent Past,” but parts of Drums and Guns still feel poorly mixed with the instrumental and electronic elements being too low to adequately transform the songs but present enough to be distracting and rob them of their bareness. And even if parts of Drums and Guns shows the band finding better ways to incorporate more straight-forward pop into their music, I still have to wonder whether or not that’s even a good move for them at all. The album presents a world of possibilities in terms of expanding their sound and yet it’s far less adventurous or experimental than The Curtain Hits the Cast, an album which still has yet to receive its place in the long list of ‘90s indie classics. Nothing on Drums and Guns even remotely resembles the fourteen-and-a-half minute drone of “Do You Know How to Waltz,” and Low’s sense of space and tension are still compromised in favour of midtempo tracks that never really develop beyond the parameters of conventional pop/rock. Perhaps where the album does suggest the most hope for future development is in the brutally unflinching approach to subject matter. Sparhawk is evidently trying to express both a great deal of inner turmoil as well as the increasingly barbarous and chaotic conditions of the world around him. I can only hope the band finds a sharper edge to wrap around its world-weary songs. Joel Elliott :: 17 March 2007 |