The New Classics / Low – The Great Destroyer
[The New Classics is a reoccurring segment in which we examine our favorite indie releases that are bound to replace our parent’s “classic rock” stash hidden in the attic or the basement. These aren’t reviews, these are uneditied testimonies and opinions about why we love what we love. Can we get a witness?]
Artist: Low
Album:The Great Destroyer
Released: 2004
Label: Sub Pop
Words by Christopher Carosi
It takes about 2 seconds for Low to announce their sonic goals had drastically changed on The Great Destroyer in the form a blaring horn at the beginning of “Monkey”, pulsing drums, and an organ from hell. It’s not too far from Gabriel’s horn announcing Judgment Day, so the album’s title becomes immediately heavy as hell. Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker sing, “Oh my my, little white lie. I swear I’m gonna make it right, this time.” The song is somewhere between resolution and purging of all emotion. “Purging” in the sense of sin? Perhaps “Monkey” as mentioned in the chorus, “Tonight the monkey dies,” could be mankind? Holy shit, I think I’ll drop it. As far as a music, The Great Destroyer, for a lot of its rocking sensibility, treats its noise with an uncomfortable, heavy hand. The drums and guitars are often overtly clanging and rough. This, as is often the case with Low’s music, creates special attention to the spaces between the notes, the players, and the beautiful arrangement of harmony between Sparhawk and Parker. All of these render the music coldly. The chorus from the rollicking “California”, “I know it breaks your heart, you had to sell the farm, back to California where it’s warm,” is a perfect example of this as far as lyric. The guitar melody is pretty pleasing, but never warm enough to cuddle up to in earnest.
Low / Monkey
Low / Silver Rider
Low / On the Edge Of
Low / When I Go Deaf
Listening through this record 7 years later, I realize how genius a lot of the guitar and vocal melodies really are, they sound timeless and have this really pleasing pop sensibility while still carrying this really angry unsettling nature. The introduction of Dave Fridmann as producer to these sessions seemed to provide a more intense balance of quiet and loud without losing the band’s unique ability to create subtle texture. Sparhawk’s guitar is allowed to really kick and scream on this album, and his exaggerated riffs seem to vomit up all of this pinned emotion, emotion one can say has been only allowed to boil those previous years. With the band’s history in mind, this record is a startling experience. Also, given that the band all but eliminated the guitar from their sound on their next album, the strange and sample-heavy Drums and Guns, it’s good to see it unleashed. The recording of the guitar and drums remind me of The Flaming Lips (whom Fridmann has worked with through that band’s whole career). I can’t help but hear some of the loudness/texture that created a sci-fi compositional quality in The Soft Bulletin on this album, but instead of filling out the speakers, the idea here is to focus on the rawest textures, and let those stand direct in opposition to silence. Either way, Fridmann’s hand provides a focus, and a strange theme to all the noise going on, almost a cartoonish quality.
The grinding sense of revenge in the amazing “Everybody’s Song” seems at first to be way off-beat, with the guitar and drums just hammering dumbly. There are feedback textures underneath the verse if you listen closely, and the nature of Mimi Parker’s small kit is stripped to maybe 3 surfaces, offering just a skeleton of rhythm for all of this noise to lean on. This song is one of the great ones you’ll hear. The feedback shimmers in waves in the bridge, only to again thrash and bang to the song’s conclusion, “Breaking everybody’s heart! Taking everyone apart! Breaking everybody’s heart! Singing everybody’s song!” It’s unclear just where the finger of blame is pointing here, but displeasure can be vague. If you squint your ears, it could be opposed to the radio itself. The song reveals this whole new fire-breathing engine to Low’s music; it creates a lot of size. I think of monsters, but that’s me.
“Silver Rider” is sublime. The song hardly goes above a rumble, which should be typical (in 2004) on a Low song. However, once we get to track 4, we’ve been raked across the ears 3 times, so this slow-burning cowboy anthem really sounds great in this context. The song is intensely visual, conjuring a rider in slow motion. The chorus is a send-off, with Sparhawk and Parker in unison, singing “La-la-la” as cymbals scatter. The second verse reads, “The march is over. The Great Destroyer, she passes through you like a knife. Oh, take me with you, you Silver Rider. Sometimes your voice is not enough.” So here, we have a yearning, almost a straight-up plea to ride away. This song only achieves greater brilliance when one hears Robert Plant’s recent cover. His hushed vocal performance really brings out the romance.
Elsewhere, the band really gets through some ear-catching guitar songs. “Just Stand Back,” “Broadway (So Many People),” and “Step” are slick pop song shrouded in sludgy noise, calling to mind the mischief and/or sadness set deep in the lyric. “On the Edge Of” sits on a twisting guitar line, with Parker playing brushes and a thundering bass drum. There’s a lot of space of pondering in this song, which is actually one that relies on soft chorus/loud verse. The three truly quiet songs are set on Side B. On “When I Go Deaf,” (one of my favorites growing up) Sparhawk accompanies himself, the guitar mixed way down, with Parker backing him up on the vocal appropriately. The song is about going deaf so one doesn’t have to deal with the pitfalls of love, arguing, songwriting, etc. All of the “noises” that can cause problems. The interesting thing about this is how self-conscious that is considering the M.O. of this record and the new flesh Low is showing with their noise. The song, in answer to that query (or in spite of it), crashes into a gnarly wall of feedback towards the end, with Sparhawk and Parker barely audible over it singing, “When I go Deaf!” That shit is educational.
“Pissing” could have been an outtake on the band’s previous records, relying on a creepy asexual narrative of lovers with a thick air of boiling anger or maybe more realistically—tired love. It never culminates, which is appropriate (zing). I love the idea of this song (much like “Silver Rider”) within this new noisy context. The “slowness” of the “slow-core” are seen as counterpoint to the way the band could now roar with higher-amplified sound. “Death of a Salesman” does not rise in noise but it does remind me of Neutral Milk Hotel a lot in its deceptively confessional style of a first person song that gets a little ridiculous. The song is about writing songs for the man, “So I did what they said, now our children are fed, cause they pay me to do what I’m asked,” and being dissatisfied with that (“So I burned my guitar”) but coming to solace with the comfort of a lover’s breast. Oh sorry, that’s the “white velvet” breast. Sure. “Walk into the Sea”’s drum beat is a reprise from “Monkey,” but this time, the tone is a little sunnier, the guitar is more spunky (ya know, not unspunky) and the lyrical content has a tiny dash of hope, “The Great Destroyer leaves every child a bastard. When it finally takes us over, I hope we float away together.” Ah, when this band finds a bit of closure in the apocalypse, then there’s hope for us all.
I also want to mention in my “research” of Low I read that Parker and Sparhawk are married (which is interesting concerning the heavy-heavy romantic content in the lyric) and are practicing Mormons (which is interesting as well for so many reasons). I declare The Great Destroyer to be far more entertaining considering horseman and plots to destroy monkeys.
15 out of 14 Joseph Smiths.
Filed under: New Classics, Not Blake, Jim, or Brendan
