The best thing about Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona, apart from all your favourite bands playing there every year, is that some of the best of them then scatter to places like Berlin to do a show and, usually, a really good show. Low are no exception to the allure of our great city and oh, how great our city can be in summertime. Yessiree, Low come to visit with us at Lido on a balmy Monday evening at the end of May, it’s enough to convince me to stay away from Barcelona.
Alan Sparhawk, Mimi Parker and Steve Garrington, although only a three-piece , put on one of the most electrifying live shows you’re likely to see this year. And here’s where most people go huh? Low? Electrifying live? Aren’t they a slowcore band or something? Sure, they’ve made slow albums but they’ve also rocked and here’s the thing, name me a poor Low album? I shall defend their honour to the death as they have a back catalogue second to none and a sound which has evolved over almost two decades which I have diligently followed for one of those.
They rate as one of my Top Ten best live music experiences ever. Alan Sparhawk’s recent side project Retribution Gospel Choir (also with bass player Steve Garrington) dropped into the new Magnet last spring and those of you lucky enough to have been among the thirtyseven or so people would have witnessed another blast of Sparhawk brilliance in that three-piece garage-rock power-combo. Two albums from RGC and it’s back to business with Low but not after RGC just completed another US/Canadian tour a week ago (it’s February as I write).
C’mon is the latest record and Try to sleep the opener is a gorgeously warm slice of vintage Low. Recorded in a former church called Sacred Heart Studio in their hometown Duluth,Minessota it’s being hailed as the Low album that will people will turn to as an introduction, which I suppose is the same as saying it’s a classic Low record. And here they come to us. Could this be one of the best summers ever?
Here’s an early video Shame…from Long Division(1995).
