CocoaMusic: Low--Drums and Guns (New!)

Artist-Low
Album-Drums and Guns
Release Date-Mar 20, 2007
Genre/Style-Indie Rock/Dream Pop/Slowcore/Sadcore
Size-72M

Official Site-http://www.chairkickers.com/
Biography-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_(band)

Review-Thinking of Low, one immediately calls to mind similar bands in what is a somewhat limited subgenre (often referred to as slowcore or sadcore). Among these bands, including Galaxie 500, Bedhead and others, Low are as much followers as they are innovators. Albums like Secret Name and What We Lost in the Fire exemplify the best possibilities of their sound, wrought with as much emotion as any other album, yet communicated in quiet restraint.

This formula has worked for Low for a decade and guides Drums and Guns, which may easily be the band’s darkest, and best, in years. While many Low albums focus on the eventual separation between people, no matter how originally amorous they may have been, this album focuses on a darkness that has become more universally relatable, and which makes for a much more affecting album.

As with many of the greatest albums from last year, including this site’s crown king (TV on the Radio’s Return to Cookie Mountain) misguided wars and general social injustices are often the focus of this album (as suggested by the album’s title). Alan Sparhawk has always had a tendency toward bleak lyrics, but the opening lines of Drums and Guns, “all the soldiers, they’re all gonna die / all the little babies, they’re all gonna die” far surpass anything he’s written in morbid terms.

That is a sense which runs throughout this album in both lyrics and composition, as the harmonies, specifically over the sparse instrumentation and handclaps of “Breaker,” give many tracks a hymnal quality, but not in the euphoric sense that is sometimes found in the quietness of Low’s other albums.

Though lyrically the album has countless highlights, the musical quality is turned up quite a few notches here in comparison to other Low albums. The quiet aesthetic remains, but songs like “Sandinista” and “Always Fade” are much busier, and the endless carousel of sounds create a hectic background for the fraught lyrics. Despite this seeming chaos, the muted nature of the music gives it a serene beauty, much like the lyrics: scathing yet artistic. The most direct criticism of the current administration comes in the form of “Silence,” in which Sparhawk meditates, “they thought the desert would divide us / in silence / it’s time to leave the fields behind us / in silence”.

Reading this review one would get the impression that this is not an enjoyable listen, and this is true. But the word “enjoyable” is something which doesn’t always define good art. Times of turmoil require artistic representations of their social mood as much as those of relative peace, if not more. This is the purpose of Drums and Guns: none of these tracks are anything you’d put on at a party, or much less listen to with anyone else. Anyone with a social conscience should be able to listen to this album in solitude and find some solace that the message of descent, albeit a bleak, apathetic one, is out there in an amazingly beautiful work of art.