Low / Double Negative

There is a reflection raised by Sub Pop's press release for the release of 'There is a reflection raised by Sub Pop's press release for the release of 'Double Negative' with which we all agree: it's really significant that Low doesn't celebrate his 25 years of career with an easy big hits, or an everlasting return to the origins or the onomastic re-edition of some (or several) of his first albums, but by publishing his most uncomfortable, challenging and demanding album of his history, in hard struggle with the equally arid but magnificent 'Drums and Guns' (2007). It is a distinctive sign of the Duluth trio, Minnesotta, that honors them and gives that measure that separates the groups that are destined to write the history of rock, independently of the commercial response that is, as we know, something conjunctural.
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Thus, after the phase rockist that marked the notables 'C'mon' (2011) and 'The Invisible Way' (2013), 'Ones and Sixes' (2015) aimed to give a new twist to the group by having BJ Burton (James Blake, Bon Iver... "a hip hop man", according to Alan Sparhawk, and whose involvement in the new album has been even greater) in the production. In the end it wasn't as significant a change as it seemed, although there was some sort of intention in his way of saturating the mix in a somewhat annoying way. It was a preview of what is clearly materialised in 'Double Negative', an album that, if you are not on notice, will make you wonder if the headphones or loudspeakers you are listening to have just broken down at that very moment, look for the purchase ticket for the CD or vinyl for the complaint or think that the sound of digital platforms is an embarrassment. In the end, with a silly face, you see that what you're listening to is exactly what Low wants you to hear.
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That's why 'Double Negative' starts in the most drastic way possible, making you imagine how Simon Le Bon felt in that mythical 'The Wild Boys' video, tied to a wheel that spun its head cyclically into the water. I'm talking about 'Quorum', an industrial noise drone (it's clear that Steve Garrington has not only put an end to the group's bass roulette, but has provided a fundamental dimension) that "turns" obsessively into the rhythm of the song, drowning the voices of Mimi Parker and Alan -those precious voices, dragged by a digital mud-. One thinks "it has to be a joke"... until, shortly before the two minutes, everything stops so that the marriage is alone and half-naked with some chords sketched singing an enigmatic "I'm tired of seeing things / You put away the book / What are you waiting for?". From then on, nothing is the same again, something changes in us and makes us aware that the challenge is great but justified.
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The tension, almost unbreathable at times, becomes a more real instrument than any guitar that sounds on the album. It doesn't take off from us in 'Dancing and Blood', although this time Mimi's vocal line and progression is sharper, a prize pavlovico that one holds on to until one learns to breathe in this new ecosystem. Once adapted, the almost orthodox kindness ("almost" i.e.) of 'Fly' or 'Always Trying To Work It Out' seem like small miracles. But soon one finds oneself hooked on that murky poison that Low has been punishing us with, a virtual masochistic relationship that culminates in 'Tempest': after minutes of glorious torture, being aware that behind that rough curtain of distortion there is a precious melody - for greater pain, insinuated in the pause of its central backwater -, the arrival of the clean, celestial 'Always Up' is as if suddenly they loosened our leash, and broke the bag that suffocated us, the ecstasy and the emotion is such that you can only cry. With that level, the last third of 'Double Negative', despite numbers full of violence like 'Rome (Always in the Dark)' -where Alan's guitars are pure magma- or a 'Disarray' that although now sounds like pure pop to us at the time we received with bewilderment, is almost docile, with the sadness of the Low always in 'Dancing and Fire' or the great melody of 'Poor Sucker'. Although some critics insist on seeing 'Double Negative' as a response to the Trump era - although it is true that the lyrics of 'Quorum' or 'Fly' could be read with the dangerous atolondramiento of the current occupant of the White House, and that in the Sub Pop note the group alludes to the instability of the "outside world" - Alan and Mimi's texts are abstract and diffuse enough to make us think that we are dealing with an album that will not only stand the test of time but will make it its best ally. A work of such density and emotion that it doesn't hurt to say that it could be the 'Disintegration' of our era or, at least, of Low.,
Qualification: 9/10
>. The best: 'Disarray', the tandem 'Tempest' + 'Always Up', 'Quorum', 'Poor Sucker', 'Fly'
You'll like it if you like: music that presents itself as an artistic challenge, capable of changing you; The Cure of 'Disintegration', Slowdive, Throbbing Gristle, Swans.
. Listen to him: Spotify
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