LOW, the eternally underground trio from Duluth, Minnesota, mark their 20th anniversary with their tenth studio album. Recorded in The Loft, the Chicago studio of fellow American veterans Wilco, it was produced by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy in a marriage made in melancholia heaven.
“Thank you for your time again and please enjoy what we made. I think it’s beautiful,” says band leader Alan Sparhawk. Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he, but Sparhawk is right. The Invisible Way’s 11 songs address “intimacy, the drug war, the class war, plain old war war, archaeology and love”, in other words the big issues, with a lush hush that belies the turmoil below the majestic, slow-moving surface.
Album number ten is still quiet, still melancholy, still pretty with its layered harmonies, but there are changes from before. “Piano, lots of piano… and an acoustic guitar,” highlights Sparhawk. More significantly, drummer Mimi Parker takes the lead vocal on five tracks, rather than the usual one or two: a new high for Low.
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