Album Review: Low - The Invisible Way
- Written by Russell Warfield
You get to a certain point in a musical career (twenty years strong and ten albums deep, in Low’s case) where stripping things back down to basics goes beyond coming full circle, and actually chimes as freshness and innovation. After reconfiguring themselves as a full blooded rock outfit about a decade ago, as well as beginning to incorporate electronic sounds into their minimalist arrangements, The Invisible Way stands as a collection of their most organic and live sounding cuts in several records
; almost all cuts made up of their trademark harmonies set to cyclical, haunted lullaby melodies, and softly strummed acoustics, peeling the songs back to their skeletons and throwing into sharp relief the things which brought Low to acclaim in the first instance.
Having said this, the familiar and relatively unadventurous textures on this record make their handful of new ingredients strike all the more strongly. With such thin arrangements woven primarily of soft guitar and softer voice, the newly added liberal usage of piano chords fall with an almighty whomp, cutting through the mix with a clout rarely associated with the instrument in contemporary alternative music. In essence, the piano is rediscovered as the percussive instrument that it actually is, the heavy chords contributing far more to the rhythm of these songs than they do the melody, effectively acting as the songs’ churchly bass lines; their slowed down heart beats. Listen to the stately measuring of the bars from the piano in the instrumental opening of Amethyst, providing the robust framework upon which the wisps of melody and sparse guitars resign themselves.
The other immediately noticeable new component is the heightened presence of drummer Mimi – the female vocalist – who, aside from providing the achingly blue harmonies, will typically contribute a lead vocal to one or two cuts. Here she enjoys several, but this also is where The Invisible Way undercuts itself by straying too far from Low’s typical formula and pre-established strengths. With its scant instrumentation and crawling tempos (even by their standards) The Invisible Way proves more than any of their other records that the true core of the music is the effortless interplay between the voices of Parker and Sparhawk. They are each other’s perfect vocal foils, and for one of them to absent themselves from a song is counterintuitive in both theory and practice. While cuts like ‘So Blue’ coil enough fraught tension to survive the absence of Sparhawk, others don’t fare so well – the far too sprightly ‘Just Make It Stop’ ending up with more of an apt title than I suspect the band were intending.
Working within such narrow sonic parameters has the effect of creating one of the more immersive mood pieces which Low have offered up for some time, with unrelenting softness and slowness drawing you into their uneasy landscapes with an easy grace. It has the simultaneous effect, however, of letting the colours of the songs run into each other – the repetitive, mnemonic melodies and oaky guitars melding into a sound which perhaps too easily ooze through the ear without leaving a stain. For that reason, the eventual electric release of the album’s penultimate song erupts through the mix like the album’s first piano chord – hinting at a sense of dynamism which is ultimately absent from the album, but one which can only be achieved through the rarity of its own occurrence. Reconciling this paradox, however, is the strength of the material itself, and the ease of the band’s performance – the two things which, whether dabbling in rock, electronics, or operating as organically as on The Invisible Way – have always granted Low’s albums their appeal, and this offering is no exception to that.
The Invisible Way is out now and available from amazon