{"id":9262,"date":"2022-03-31T08:35:21","date_gmt":"2022-03-31T07:35:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/?p=9262"},"modified":"2022-03-31T08:35:22","modified_gmt":"2022-03-31T07:35:22","slug":"from-low-to-loud-and-proud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/2022\/03\/31\/from-low-to-loud-and-proud\/","title":{"rendered":"FROM LOW TO LOUD AND PROUD"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

FROM LOW TO LOUD AND PROUD<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

by Norman Warwick<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

When our culture and tradition correspondent, Michael Higgins (left)<\/em><\/strong>, signposted a few sidetracks & detours we should explore around Manchester Cathedral last year, we didn\u00b4t really expect to find a handful of top notch music groups with Low at the top. Nor did we anticipate a list of top-notch rock bands scheduled to appear in Manchester Cathedral. Next month brings to the city the excellent Low playing there on 22nd<\/sup> April 2022 .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have a couple of the dozen or so albums Low have made, and some tracks off those have made it on to my playlists. To categorise their music is almost impossible, but whenever I undertake the annual tidy-up of my music rooms I invariably find their cds in close proximity of others by The Cowboy Junkies. Hmmm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u00b4m not sure why that should be but Max Freedman seems to love to go a-wandering through these sort of fields on-line, so a-googling I did go. Max Freedman is a writer and editor with bylines in culture publications such as MTV News, Pitchfork, Paste Magazine, FLOOD Magazine, The A.V. Club, and other blogs and websites spanning a wide variety of interests. His journalistic work focuses on, among other topics, LGBTQ+<\/a> and QTPOC<\/a> artists who break out-dated gender, sexuality, and race norms while fighting for liberation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to his journalistic work, Max runs a newsletter called Paint the Black Hole Blacker. Click here to read and subscribe<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can also hire Max to write about countless non-musical subjects for blogs, biographies, articles, and webpages. Contact Max Freedman here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Freedman\u00b4s (right)<\/em><\/strong> latest piece, on Low, began with gloriously memorable phrase leading us to the first comma and telling us that<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4After what sounds like a mechanical bull backfiring inside a hall of mirrors, Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker light the whole cow on fire and let it explode. On White Horses, the opener of Low\u2019s 13th album HEY WHAT, Sparhawk\u2019s voice and guitars are among the loudest and clearest they\u2019ve been across 13 albums spanning nearly three decades, with Parker\u2019s harmonies not far behind in heft and lucidity. If the ever-mercurial married duo (HEY WHAT is technically the first album Low created as a duo\u2014Steve Garrington, their fourth bassist, departed last year) have long sounded listless and adrift amid myriad moments of personal and political uncertainty, HEY WHAT re.imagines Low as a vehicle for powerhouse vocals, high-Richter-scale distortion and blink-and-you\u2019ll-miss-it percussion. The duo\u2019s recent fascination with 21st-century disconnection continues, but the bombast is louder and the tranquility is quieter, and in focusing on lucid melodies and unobscured fidelity, they\u2019ve created their most visceral work yet.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In some ways, HEY WHAT is a logical outgrowth of the drastic left turn Low took with 2018\u2019s Double Negative. On that album, Low deconstructed the elements of mid-tempo rock music, kept fragments of the brusque force they began exploring on 2015\u2019s Ones and Sixes, and rebuilt what they\u2019d destroyed with unsettling drones, noise and political ire (a thread loosely woven throughout the Low catalog). All these elements foggily ricocheted off one another with the same nauseating paralysis of scrolling through the headlines in this godforsaken era. This doom spiral of apocalyptic crackle and haunting whispers was intentional, as Double Negative stemmed from Sparhawk\u2019s disillusionment with Trump\u2019s rise. Like both that album and Ones and Sixes, HEY WHAT finds Sparhawk and Parker pairing with Bon Iver affiliate BJ Burton to transform their foundational \u201cslowcore\u201d sound (a term they disavow) into something more akin to radio static, but now, instead of letting the ominous future get them down, they find resolve in the rubble.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Though not quite built from acceptance or optimism,\u00a0HEY WHAT\u00a0documents the choice to keep living a regular life when a full lifetime is increasingly not guaranteed. Sparhawk and Parker (left)<\/strong> center the personal challenges that come with this determination and largely, though not entirely, abandon the political malaise of\u00a0Double Negative\u00a0to focus on how existential dread can make a regular old social or romantic life that much harder. On \u201cDon\u2019t Walk Away,\u201d a couple who\u2019ve shared a bed for eternity still feel distant from each other, and the softness of the track\u2019s formless synths and electronic garble emphasize the emotional gap. Atop the biting grayscale tremolo of \u201cI Can Wait,\u201d Sparhawk and Parker wail viciously an emotional cycle involving despondent complacence, passion for another person and an urge to withdraw entirely. Their voices cut through the abrasive haze, just like a steadfast will to keep going can silence thoughts of giving into dismay.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, this being a Low album, grander sociopolitical affairs inevitably enter the picture, though only in fragments. \u201cDisappearing\u201d sees the duo reckoning with climate change\u2019s potential for unimaginable destruction over stunning volcanic crescendos of industrial gnarl. \u201cThat disappearing horizon \/ It brings cold comfort to my soul \/ An ever-present reminder \/ The constant face of the unknown,\u201d they sing so sharply that the arrangements don\u2019t swallow their voices as is common on prior Low records. It\u2019s hard not to think of the \u201cdisappearing horizon\u201d as the notion that we\u2019re rapidly running out of time to save the planet amid news that global temperatures are <\/em>rising even faster than we thought<\/em><\/a>. At the nearly a cappella outset of \u201cDays Like These,\u201d Sparhawk aptly summarizes how the ceaseless onslaught of bad news feels when he all but shouts, by Low\u2019s standards, \u201cWhen you think you\u2019ve seen everything \/ Find we\u2019re living in days like these.\u201d As he and Parker add ginormous, fanged barbs of fuzz to their ruminations on this defeating era of isolation and fear, they sound equally anxious and sure-footed, just like all the rest of us going through the motions every day despite the urgency of the modern moment. For something so fatalistic, it\u2019s invigoratingly confident and melodic in both its ripping and ambient moments.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plain beauty and melody lie in every corner of HEY WHAT, even the ugly parts. On \u201cMore,\u201d Parker\u2019s fog-clearing falsetto gives her unimaginable strength amid the riveting, pipe-bashing destruction Sparhawk wields with his guitar. When the duo sing \u201cI put a lot of thought \/ Into the price you pay \/ To hear the morning come\u201d on \u201cThe Price You Pay (It Must Be Wearing Off),\u201d the aqueous, silver synths make what could be an exhausted statement about returning from the end of one\u2019s rope sound like a bracing reclamation of life, even as facing the future becomes tougher every day.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sparhawk and Parker find an unusual kind of determination in their woes: Since there\u2019s no escaping the growing reality of a doomed timeline, the best they can do is live this life while it lasts. It\u2019s an antidote to disconnection, and the quasi-title track \u201cHey\u201d administers this cure directly to the poison. The back half of the track\u2019s gorgeous, dream-like drift finds Parker chanting \u201chey\u201d into the void, only to eventually hear \u201cwhat\u201d back, as if she\u2019s reaching out but only being misunderstood in return. Yet she remains placid, never succumbing to anger or sullenness. Instead, she keeps going.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

A few tickets may still be available for this special event to be held in Manchester Cathedral (right) in April 2022.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

See Tickets – Low Tickets | April 2022 <\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.seetickets.com\/event\/low\/manchester-cathedral\/1979821<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The prime source for this article was a piece posted on-line by Max Freedman<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In our occasional re-postings Sidetracks And Detours are confident that we are not only sharing with our readers excellent articles written by experts but are also pointing to informed and informative sites readers will re-visit time and again. Of course, we feel sure our readers will also return to our daily not-for-profit knowing that we seek to provide core original material whilst sometimes spotlighting the best pieces from elsewhere, as we engage with genres and practitioners along all the sidetracks & detours we take.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article was collated by Norman Warwick, a weekly columnist with Lanzarote Information and owner and editor of this daily blog at Sidetracks And Detours.<\/strong> Norman has also been a long serving broadcaster, co-presenting the weekly all across the arts programme on Crescent Community Radio for many years with Steve, and his own show on Sherwood Community Radio, whilst regularly guesting on BBC Radio Manchester, BBC Radio Lancashire, BBC Radio Merseyside and BBC Radio 4.<\/strong> As a published author and poet he was a founder member of Lendanear Music, with Colin Lever and Just Poets with Pam McKee, Touchstones Creative Writing Group (where he was creative writing facilitator for a number of years) with Val Chadwick and all across the arts with Robin Parker.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Monday to Friday,<\/strong> you will find a daily post here at Sidetracks And Detours and should you be looking for further good reading over the weekend you can visit our massive but easy to navigate archives of over 500 articles.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The purpose of this daily not-for-profit blog is to deliver news, previews, interviews and reviews from all across the arts to die-hard fans and non- traditional audiences around the world. We are therefore always delighted to receive your own articles here at Sidetracks And Detours. So if you have a favourite artist, event, or venue that you would like to tell us more about just drop a Word document attachment to me at <\/strong>normanwarwick55@gmail.com<\/a> with a couple of appropriate photographs in a zip folder if you wish. Beiung a not-for-profit organisation we unfortunately cannot pay you but we will always fully attribute any pieces we publish. You therefore might also. like to include a brief autobiography and photograph of yourself<\/strong> in your submission. We look forward to hearing from you.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile we are grateful to our regular correspondent Michael Higgins and occasional reporter Steve Bewick and the sharing of information by such reliable sources such as<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hot Biscuits Jazz Radio                      www.fc-radio.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AllMusic  <\/a>                                           <\/strong>https:\/\/www.allmusic.com<\/p>\n\n\n\n

feedspot                                              https:\/\/www.feedspot.com\/?_src=folder<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jazz In Reading                                  https:\/\/www.jazzinreading.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jazziz                                                 https:\/\/www.jazziz.com
<\/a>Ribble Valley Jazz & Blues                https:\/\/rvjazzandblues.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rob Adams                                         Music That\u00b4s Going Places<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lanzarote Information                        https:\/\/lanzaroteinformation.co.uk<\/p>\n\n\n\n

all across the arts                                 www.allacrossthearts.co.uk<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rochdale Music Society                     rochdalemusicsociety.org<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lendanear                                           www.lendanearmusic<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Agenda Cultura Lanzarote<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Larry Yaskiel \u2013 writer<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Lanzarote Art Gallery                  https:\/\/lanzaroteartgallery.com<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Goodreads                                        https:\/\/www.goodreads<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

groundup music                                  HOME | GroundUP Music<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maverick                                             https:\/\/maverick-country.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joni Mitchell newsletter<\/p>\n\n\n\n

passenger newsletter<\/p>\n\n\n\n

paste mail ins<\/p>\n\n\n\n

sheku kanneh mason newsletter<\/p>\n\n\n\n

songfacts                                           en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/SongFacts<\/p>\n\n\n\n

correspondents                                Michael Higgins<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                                                            Steve Bewick<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                                                            Gary Heywood Everett<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                                                            Steve Cooke<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Susana Fondon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Plain beauty and melody lie in every corner of HEY WHAT, even the ugly parts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9267,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[105],"class_list":["post-9262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-low-cathedral-community"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9262"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9270,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9262\/revisions\/9270"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}