 by Keith Pille
Depending on which set of events you picked, you could make an argument for 2005 being either a stellar or a rotten year for Low. On the stellar side, they released a masterpiece of an album whose drastic departure from past work earned them wide praise and swept the Minnesota Music Awards. On the rotten side, they abruptly canceled a tour because of mental health concerns and accepted the departure of bassist Zak Sally.
 When
Alan Sparhawk was kind enough to take time out from buying recycled construction
materials (he lists working on his garage as a “worthwhile thing”
he’s been concentrating on, along with family and running) to talk to
me by phone, it was clear that Sally’s exodus still weighs heavily on
his mind. “It’s tough, but it’s something that’s been
going on for a while with everybody,” Sparhawk says. “It’s
stressful, it’s hard. Some things that had to do with the band, some things
that had to do with everybody else’s situations. You know, Zak’s
married, and he has a son now. I don’t know ... we’ve been doing
this for a long time, and I don’t think anyone should have to expect that
anyone else would always have the same drive, the same balance as to whether
they want to do it or not.
“Are there things that I could have done differently that would have kept
him in the band? I don’t know. There are so many things ... I don’t
know. I talked to him the other day and we didn’t talk about music.”
Sally will be replaced by Matt Livingston, who has previously worked with Sparhawk
in the Gospel Retribution Choir (Sparhawk jokingly describes his penchant for
side projects as “a sickness”); the process of integrating Livingston
into the band is ongoing. “It’s a process we’re working out
right now,” Sparhawk says. “It’s important to me to have a
foothold when playing live. Even if we’re not completely perfect—still
floating around and still trying to find where it’s going to land—I’m
pretty determined to make sure that it’s found its own spirit …
We just need to play. That’s how it worked with Zak. When Zak joined,
we were still all barely learning how to play our instruments, and we all took
a long time to find what we found. I’m up for the adventure, the struggle.
The time it took for us to find ourselves in the beginning was an exciting thing.
If we’re going to go and do it again, I look forward to that, too.”
 Adding
to the difficulty of the task Livingston faces, his first show as a member of
Low will be extremely atypical. Specifically, says Sparhawk, it’s a Christmas
show (and a benefit for a school in Kenya). “I think about two-thirds
of the show will be Christmas stuff. And then the other songs we’re playing
are somewhat related. And then a few new … Christmas songs that we’ve
been working on. We have some other people from Duluth that are going to be
helping us flesh out some songs. It’s kind of got a Kathie Lee Gifford
vibe to it. I don’t know; It’s fun. We’ve been rehearsing
a lot lately, and it’s really exciting. Like the first song on our Christmas
record, called ‘Just Like Christmas.’ When we put that record out,
we just assumed that we were never going to play it live because there’s
so much going on. The whole beauty of that song is that there’s just a
huge wall of sound. But with some extra musicians, it really comes together,
and I’m really excited about it. It’s one of my favorite songs we’ve
ever done.”
While walls of sound (or noise) were once rarities in the Low oeuvre, they’ve
recently moved to the forefront. Half of the reason that The Great Destroyer
is such a powerful (and shocking, to some old-guard Low fans) album is that
it is replete with enormous piles of towering sound. This drastic change reflects
a recent discovery on Sparhawk’s part: big amps are fun. “ I think
the only thing that I’m really happy with is when it gets really loud,”
he says. “I play in this other band the Retribution Gospel Choir, and
that’s really been a loud rock thing, and I’ve kind of discovered
of late that the way I approach the guitar really conflicts well with volume.
Like, after all those years of playing quiet, and trying to get as big of a
sound as possible out of the guitar when you’re only playing quiet, you
know, you plug into a loud amp and suddenly it’s huge.” Going further,
he describes a specific guitar line, the high, droning part that sneaks up halfway
into “Just Stand Back”: “I just tried to make a noise that
sounded musical and like ripping everything apart at the same time. That’s
my favorite sound, the beautiful ripping sound.”
 The
other half of The Great Destroyer’s power lies in its intensely
personal, emotional lyrics harmonized by Sparhawk and Mimi Parker. In virtually
each song, figures battle heartbreak and relationship troubles and discouragement
and the Minnesota winter (and let’s not shit ourselves—that’s
not a foe to be taken lightly). It’s potent stuff, and few artists are
willing to go that far in revealing themselves. “ I know I’m being
open like that,” Sparhawk says, “but I learned early on that it’s
like, if you’re going to get up there, what’s the point in hiding?
You know, you’re on stage. Why go only 72 percent? If that’s how
you feel, just lay it on paper because if you don’t, it’s going
to suck.
“Good music is good music because it’s honest,” he continues.
“The artists that I respect the most are the ones who—when they
start singing or playing—they’re not playing around with you. Everything
from Iggy Pop to Barbra Streisand to the Nation of Ulysses—if you see
them do what they do, the reason it’s good is because you know it’s
coming clear from inside them. I mean, if you’re going to do that, you
have to be prepared for the fact that you’re going to have to lay it down
in front of a lot
of people.”
Sparhawk and Parker definitely lay it down, and we’re lucky to be the
audience. ||
Low perform Fri., Dec. 9 at First Avenue with Trampled by Turtles. 6 p.m.
$15/$17. 21+. 701 First Ave. N, Mpls. 612-338-8388.
For more information on the band, check out their official
website at ChairKickers.com.
The proceeds from Friday’s show will go to the Maasai School Project,
a Kenya-based nonprofit run by a friend of Low. More information can be found
at Laleyio.com.
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