Low has another winner in HEY WHAT

Low's HEY WHAT was released September 10 on Sub Pop

No one likely needs an introduction to Duluth, Minnesota band, Low. The three piece has been at it a while, churning out spare, what-you-see-is-what-you-get rock for nearly three decades. Yet, my path did not cross theirs — well, their music’s — until 2005’s sunny The Great Destroyer (Sub Pop), a happenstance discovery via probably All Songs Considered or some magazine. [I know. How quaint.] 

Subsequent music from the trio drifted in and out of my life until 2018 when Low released Double Negative (Sub Pop). At the time, the record was hailed as, if not a departure from, then an evolution to the formula the band had tended to use to that point in their career. Fine, that was enough to get me to give it a whirl. 

First impression? Not good. And folks, I’m just about as tolerant a music listener as you will find. I can feel guilty for not liking some records that I feel like I should like based on some history with the band or whatever. But Double Negative did not do it for me. 

However, that said more about me than it did about the album. Because I wasn’t done with Double Negative and its warped and crumpled contours. I trekked out to the beach one weekend, pressed play and started walking. As the landscape became more desolate, Mimi Parker’s and Alan Sparhawk’s warbled harmonies fronting crackling distortions began to make much more sense to me. It all clicked. And there’s a lesson in there. There’s this commingling of time and place and mood with music when they cross paths and dance, however fleetingly, that never ceases to surprise and is almost always among the most beautiful of things. 

So, when HEY WHAT (Sub Pop) was released recently, I was better prepared. I was in a better headspace before I tackled it. And it is a fantastic extension of the tracks Low laid down on Double Negative. Those vocal harmonies may not be the prettiest out there, but there is this quality about them — and this is nothing new — that makes them feel like home. Over (or hell, behind) the hairpin bends and breaks of the lurching guitars, those vocals on songs like “More” or “Disappearing” or “Hey,” for example, are like a call from somewhere distant. Not a distress call from space necessarily, but a reassuring message (albeit with some urgency) from somewhere out there, whether in the cosmos or your own head. What better soundtrack for these times.

And if that is the sort of diversion you need, then HEY WHAT is worth a spin.

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