Low, The Roundhouse, London

The audience at the Roundhouse stand waiting in anticipation while the clock projected onto the screen at the back of the stage counts down the minutes. As zero hour approaches, the crowd chant – “five, four, three, two, one”. Low walk onto the stage. If sinister three-piece husband/wife Mormon slowcore is what you’re looking for, then you’re in the right place. There is a black and white projection of a waterfall running down the backdrop of the stage. As they walk on, the outlines of Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker create silhouettes on the back wall, an effect both hypnotic and sinister, adjectives one could use as a fairly apt description of Low.

 They kick off with new album, Ones And Sixes opener, ‘Gentle’. Electronic, scattershot drums like a eulogy, their audience are immediately rapt. They follow with lead single from the album, ‘No Comprende’ - the muted 4/4 of the guitar underpinning Sparhawk’s croons, “The house is on fire and your hands are tied…” Things are equally as menacing on ‘The Innocents’, with Parker’s gentle, lilting “all you innocents, might be done for it...” Low’s music has always resisted interpretation, the repetition of single lines forcing their listener to engage with a song as a sonic landscape, rather than reading the words like a narrative. No verse/chorus here, only the slow teasing out of a theme. Low stand quiet onstage - no hints, no chat, no clues. Just three shadows on a black and white backdrop.

Now entering their third decade as a band, Low have never rested on their laurels. Although thematically Low albums often reference each other, every new release represents a band constantly moving forward. Ones And Sixes is as far removed from the lush, Tweedy-produced guitar songs of previous effort, The Invisible Way as that album was from the icy beauty of 2011’s C’mon, or the electronic bleeps of 2007’s Drums And Guns. Although their music has never stayed the same, the seam that runs through all Low records though, is that sense of foreboding - the feeling that while the band are standing onstage singing, there is something in the corner of your eye, something approaching.