Low
I Could Live In Hope

Alright, I'll put myself out there: at the top are the Red House Painters, then, going down, all the others. Codeine, Galaxie 500, Mazzy Star, Seam...and Low. Ah, Low. I don't know, they never really grabbed me. The acclaimed "I Could Live In Hope" I've always found too meditative to be placed alongside the existential intensity cornerstones of the movement like "Down Colorful Hill" and "Frigid Stars." The album tells a story in a depressed manner, but it doesn't always narrate depression. It adheres to the formal rules of the game: languid chords, apathetic vocals, sluggish drumming, lethargic yet prominent bass... resulting thus, in more than a few instances, mannerist. Some might argue that Low have taken the path of "spiritual meditation" and that this sought-after solemnity is intentional and achieved. Fine, but the essence of the discussion does not change. Whatever the band's purpose was, the album's arrangements appear hedonistic in their ostentatious and somewhat cerebral suffering.

In perhaps the most sincere episode of the work, "Words", already in '94 there was nonetheless an attitude far from new, with that heartfelt galactic-style voice and the rest of the ensemble accompanying it with the typical sadness of the genre. Yet overall, the piece works. With "Fear" Galaxie embraces Drake and the pain becomes more intimate, but I prefer good Nick when he sings "Time Has Told Me." With "Cut" and "Slide", instead begins the intellectualism applied to fatalism. Arpeggios à la Codeine open the former, then give way to a threatening yet almost imperceptible bass. The latter, however, is not far from the dreamy atmosphere breathed in a "In My Garden" sung by Jarboe, albeit there the filter was predominantly Gothic. The most ambitious, "Lullaby", is also the most successful along with the opening track, with a crescendo guitar appendix that finally exhibits a concrete and tangible dramatic tension, before falling back into the initial anemia. Unfortunately, however, when compared to a "24"...Kozelek's masterpiece proves superior both in its ability to craft landscapes of desolate melancholy, and for vocal interpretation (Kozelek is Kozelek, my friends: a distant yet so close voice, tormented yet so indifferent, mature yet so childish) without taking anything away from Mimi Parker. The other tracks suffer the same flaws, and the closing "Sunshine" attempts to slightly deviate from the funereal tone of the album, an apparent glimmer of light, which as such lets the listener sink into an even denser spectral darkness once it concludes. But the repeated pursuit of ontological solitude, aseptic desolation and all that, at times undermines the spontaneity, the naturalness, as if Low HAD to sound a certain way, like "we have to win the gloomy band of the decade award." No, that doesn't sit well with me anymore.

Not bad, but if I'm down I'll turn to something else.