In their two-decade career, Low have been gratifyingly predictable. Glaciated indie-rock, stoically adorned with hoarse, cascading guitars, droning vocal harmonies – tackling similarly chilling issues of dead lovers and warmongering presidents. It’s fair to say they mirror the encompassing permafrost of their famously cold hometown of Duluth Minnesota, I imagine if a northern Minnesotan winter could sing, it would sound a lot like Low.
That’s not to say it isn’t a unique sound, Low’s numbed take on indie rock tradition has stayed consistently inspiring, and a four year break is just long enough for their sound to be readily welcomed all over again. C’mon is the band’s ninth record, and comes following the bitter, Bush-inspired debilitations of 2007’s Drums & Guns – and it balls up most of that topical rage into a hushed, weary, personal series of stricken rock songs. It’s abstract, but always exhausted, and hints at the same deep hurt that’s always left the trio sounding staggered, half-dead, searching for a warmth to believe in, which fits the bill for most other Low albums. But on a more individualistic level, C’mon’s songs are denser, deeper, and simply better than the bulk of the band’s discography. Those centralized sparks in creativity help lift an album that should be expectedly decent into something that’s quietly great.
The ingredients to C’mon’s success are fairly ordinary. A band that usually turns in 10-or-so good songs developed an inspiration that resulted in an effort consisting of 10-or-so great songs, the Low sound has stayed the same, just worked differently and expanded in new, better ways. Opener “Try to Sleep” thaws out their traditional moroseness with a few chirping sleigh bells (which are amongst the happiest sounds the band has ever committed to tape). The textural “Witches” mixes in a swath of clawing, Neil Young guitars, letting Sparhawk sing from a place of affronted determination rather than the usual bedridden despondency. Centerpiece “Especially Me” has Mimi Parker waxing some of her best poetry over gentle percussive thumps – “Cry me a river /so I can float over to you.”
Most of these songs are anthems of some kind, pushing aside the gentle melancholy of the average Low record in favor of defiance, of bedraggled emotion, of I’m-tired-of-your-shit antagonism. For a band that spends most of their time navel-gazing, it’s a good look, the paired harmonies of Sparhawk and Parker work excitably well in that stronger context, you get the sense that C’mon is a result of the more ruminating anger of Drums & Guns turned inward, it’s specific people and events, rather than concepts – and it boils over into some truly moving songs.
But none more moving than “Nothing But Heart;” the 8-minute penultimate chant towers over the rest of the record in both stature and beauty. The idea behind the song is quite simple, marching guitars, a singular, sculpted lyrical passage, slowly building over the course of that potentially sigh-inducing running-time, but its potency is unmatched. Low has written plenty of long songs over the years, but this one is given full ornamentation, unafraid to rock out in the faces of insecurity. It has a youthful, idealistic brush to it, something that makes repeating “I’m nothing but heart” over and over again a lot more meaningful than it should be, and I think that added element of fleeting teenaged spirit is what turns C’mon into a stroke of greatness. Whatever struggles inspired the record allowed for a bold streak of emotion that was never part of Low’s orbit before. That or they just managed to string together a few really good songs after a career defined by likability rather than magnitude. Whatever the case, it’ll probably take you by surprise.
