Reviews

The Great Destroyer – Low

Label: Rough Trade

You have to admire the restraint really, don’t you. Conceived at the height of grunge’s commercial success, when it was tricky to even nip down the shops for a pack of custard creams without treading on a fuzz pedal, their commendable mission-statement was to create music as quietly and as slowly as possible. Purveyors of (s)lowcore, whether through a reactionary stubbornness or genuine artistic desire, their methods paid great dividends. Songs developed like sketches of landscapes in the dim light of dusk, gradually exploring faint contours. Haste was a remarkably unfamiliar concept, every strike of a string or drum-skin delicately and carefully arranged, a necessary craftsmanship given the amount of time you had to consider it before the next came along. Urges were not characteristic Low traits, there were few things that could not wait. So what to make of ‘The Great Destroyer’s change of course, then?  

Low have made, by their own definition, a “stinkin’ rock record”. You heard right, this is not a joke, even if it’s clearly not as true as it purports to be. But what of the niche they have spent years meticulously carving away at by hand? What of the detail and the care? What of the withdrawn tenderness and dry lyrics? The truth is there has been a change of gear here, the walls of their haven have crumbled away, there’s a wider view and the shot takes in both blazing fires and flickering candlelight. But there is still only one band that could have conceivably made this. Every song is still so easy to fall in love with, each moment still crammed with rich detail.

It’s like tantric sex, or at least we hazard a guess that it could be. It’s the minutiae of the journey, rather than the actual destination that is so important. You will still reach your destination and it will be all the more intense for having charted such an intricate path. After years of creeping carefully, aside from the occasional flourish of volume like on ‘Trust’s standout track ‘Canada’, it feels like they’ve reached their destination. And so they give into temptation. This is like one immense, overdue rush of blood to the head. Individual tracks follow that course here in their own right too, ‘Pissing’ being one track (‘When I Go Deaf’ another) that slips cautiously out of the silence, weaving trademark sandpaper melodies over lumbering background rhythms before descending, at the 3 and a half minute mark, into cathartic feedback, letting their emotions fly.

Opening track ‘Monkey’ makes an immediate statement, Mimi Parker’s drums more domineering than ever, though still set back perfectly, like a tribal beat of war, as a sinister air takes hold of the vocals and scythe like guitars follow suit. ‘Silver Rider’ takes its bluster from a more burgeoning ethereal mass of sound, ‘Just Stand Back’ is the sweetest, almost upbeat alt-country tune, reinforced with rough-edged distortion and given a twist with the reemergence of those sinister lyrics, and ‘On the Edge Of’ is positively swimming in psychedelia, perhaps stealing a cap of Mercury Rev’s potion off producer Dave Fridmann. 

Far from feeling cheated, or like they’ve betrayed themselves and discarded everything that made them so precious, it feels right, it feels due. Everything’s still there, you just have more to dig through. And having the power of restraint can perhaps only truly be effective when you know exactly when to let go.

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Release: Low - The Great Destroyer
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Released: 21 January 2005