Getting Close to Low
A look at Low - A Lifetime of Temporary Relief: Ten Years of B-Sides and Rarities
News broke late last year that Mimi Parker died. She’d been sick with cancer, but still performed as Low’s drummer until July of 2022. But for almost 30 years, her and her husband Alan Sparhawk were the core of the Minnesota band, a group that I never really sat down with and tried to listen to until after her passing.
I decided to remedy that recently when I came across a copy of their 2004 box set A Lifetime of Temporary Relief, a collection of B-sides and odds and ends. It’s not always the easiest listen, and there’s arguably some moments that don’t work, but until they get a proper anthology, it’s probably the best place to take a long look at the band.
Low’s known for a slow, melodic style of playing. Sometimes it’s called slowcore, but that’s a label I’ve heard the band doesn’t agree with. It sort of implies music that’s in slow motion, drawn out, slurred vocals and whole notes. I don’t think that’s quite how I’d describe Low, at least at their best. When everything clicked for them, Low’s a band of exquisite sounds: close-knit vocal harmonies, gentle drumming and strummed guitar. It’s music that makes me think of that late night scene from Night of the Hunter, when the two kids are in the barn and watch Robert Mitchum in the moonlight.
The set opens with their first songs: “Lullaby” and “Cut,” both included here as demos. The sound is hissy and the duo’s still working out some kinks, but even here you can hear their sound starting to take shape. “Lullaby” stretches out for ten minutes, Parker’s hushed vocals almost wordless or too indistinct to make out. Sparhawk’s guitar, meanwhile, is gentle and slowly fades out of focus. “Cut” is shorter, ending abruptly, but has a similar vibe.
Another early track does the same thing in higher fidelity: “Peanut Butter Toast and American Bandstand.” Against a gentle swinging rhythm, Sparhawk’s guitar chimes and the couple sing together. “Teach me how to cook,” they sing, “teach me how to dance.” They find a gentle groove and mine it for all it’s worth - it lasts just over two minutes, but feels like it could go on forever. It’s like “Sweet Jane” but recorded by American Analog Set.
The demos on disc one are nice in a snapshot sense, showing how songs evolved into finished forms, but some of them are interesting in their own right. “Prisoner,” for example, started life as a dirge. Vocals so low it’s hard to pick them out, a chugging beat that sounds like an assembly line. In its finished form, the guitar’s taken on a weird, twangy tone as it hovers around the same chords, moving slightly up and down.
Several of the songs on the first disc came from the fruitful The Curtain Hits the Cast sessions. Is that their finest record? Maybe! Even the outtakes presented here show the band on a creative hot streak, although hot might not be quite the right word for a band that moved so slow and deliberately. Notes hang in the air, vocals emerge as if from the night. It all comes to a head with the demo for “Bright,” where Parker’s voice emerges over an electric keyboard, building into a drone as voices chatter away behind her.
As the 90s turned into the 2000s, Low showed signs of evolving. “Venus,” which opens disc two, is slow, but is built around a simple chord progression and Sparhawk’s gentle voice. It chugs and builds in momentum and has an energy their earlier music never seemed to need. It sounds like it could’ve been written in 1965 or even 2022 - it’s timeless. Later on, it’s presented in an alternate version that’s a little cleaner-sounding and has some additional keyboards. Both are nice to have.
They continued to play around and experiment on B-sides and non-album cuts. “Surf” is them woodshedding, getting as close to rocking out as they normally seemed to, while an early version of “Be There” is almost ambient: vocals slowly come out from the darkness and Sparhawk’s guitar chimes and rings like church bells.
Multiple loose tracks from the sessions for 1999’s Secret Name show up here, ranging from fragments (“Try Try Try”), demos (“Will the Night”) and vinyl-only tracks (“Last Breath”). Most interesting are the demo for “Lion/Lamb” which has a hazy, late-night ambience from the droning keyboard to the way it fades out into wordless vocals. Conversely, “Old Man Song” has them experimenting with effects: Sparhawk’s guitar wobbles and ripples, with the drums only show up as accents.
This experimentation takes full stage for the remixed version of “Joan of Arc.” Both mixes are included here, but the “20 Below Mix” is drenched in reverb and haze, almost smeared with vaseline. It lends an already spooky song an additional feeling, like it’s being sung out of a well, or coming to you from a cavern. It also suggests the direction the band would take on their most recent records, particularly Hey What’s jagged, experimental angles.
Hidden after a moment of silence are three live tracks, done in what the band calls “In Misfits Style.” They’re presented in low-fidelity, sounding like something bootlegged by a boom box, and show the band thrashing and smashing around. Perhaps Sparhawk’s shouting owes more to Lux Interior than Danzig, but that’s nitpicking. They’re fun and even with the subpar sound, you can tell the band was having fun, too.
The final disc opens with “I Remember,” a song that’s drenched in old keyboards and drum machines. It sounds very new wave, maybe a little like an old Passions single. “One of our secret favorites,” says the band in the liner notes. I’m glad it’s here: it’s way too much of a good song to have languished as the B-side of a British single.
A handful of the songs here are ones the band recorded for compilations. “When You Walked” was on one for a charity disc, while “Kindly Blessed” ended up on one released by Secretly Canadian. “Blessed” is notable for being a cappella, just Parker singing alone and harmonizing with herself. It shows what a wonderful voice she had, and if you believe the liner notes, how quickly she worked: “Mimi wrote this in five minutes while washing the dishes.”
“Don’t Drop the Baby” shows another side of the band. It’s soft, but fun, having the feel of something they dashed out with a grin on their faces. There’s a spoken interlude, handclaps, even a joke.
Scattered through the set are covers of everyone from Bob Dylan to Spacemen 3. Low’s a band that’s unafraid to wear influences on its sleeve. Some of them are fun, but of them all “Surfer Girl” is one that’s essential and maybe key to this whole set. Recorded live “somewhere in Belgium,” it takes the Beach Boys classic in a new direction. It’s gentle, strummed, and done with soft harmonies. The band says they used to sing it as a lullaby, but never recorded it in a studio. I’m glad they did manage to get it down somewhere, though, because it’s just a gorgeous performance that builds up and soars.
The box set winds down to a close with some outtakes from Things We Lost in the Fire and Trust, which show the band exploring new sounds: “Don’t Carry It All” has acoustic guitars and piano, harmonies pushed way up in the mix, and less drumming. “Fearless” takes this further, mixing in percussion, but retaining a folk-rock vibe. But “Overhead” has a darker sound: muddy guitars and percussion, spooky noises in the background. It reminds me of the second half of Heroes and its industrial landscapes at times.
Originally released almost 20 years ago, A Lifetime of Temporary Relief ends before the band’s final decade, one that saw them breaking radically with their sound on Double Negative and Hey What, into records that are sonically harsh and opaque, full of odd angles and locked doors. Low was a band that retained its edge right up until the end - if indeed, this is the end. I suppose only Sparhawk knows for sure, and I wouldn’t dare to assume anything on his part.
But for a band that’s somewhat daunting to get into and has a mixed reputation - I know someone who says they were the worst live act they’ve ever seen - a set such as this shows them as a band who challenged themselves, weren’t afraid to show off their influences and occasionally have a little fun. It’s a little pricey on the second-hand market, but maybe Low will see fit to release this one on Bandcamp or something. Along with The Curtain Hits the Cast and Trust, this set is one I’d recommend to anyone looking to explore this band.