The Low Lows
The Low Lows, though you wouldn't know it to see them now, once had a prickly reputation for avoiding performance, & in their early years existed almost exclusively through a short run of strange & mournful recordings. Their swirling, majestic debut "Fire On The Bright Sky" was released at home & abroad in October 2006 to critical acclaim, and closely followed by the leaner, feral balladry of "Shining Violence" and the "Elizabeth Pier" EP. Then in 2008 the Athens GA trio relocated to Austin TX, and unexpectedly flowered quite suddenly onstage into a raw & sprawling 10-player communal spectacle.
Counting members of Polyphonic Spree, Parker & Lily, Dark Meat and South San Gabriel among their players & alumni, the Low Lows' highly orchestrated 5-man brass section evokes both stax/volt-style balladry and Neutral Milk cacophony. Stately, dreamlike waltzes build to explosive, gospel-tinged climaxes. Druggy slow-burns and woozy country narcosis alternate with feedback drones & buried melodies that would be perfectly at home in a Velvets or Ghost show. Parker's high, lonely voice floats over everything, stark but sweet, recounting confessional love stories in a concentrated, reverberative, obliquely tragic prose. Steel guitar, vibraphone, & a slew of vintage organs and pianos round out a dense, funereal live sound, evocative of Band of Horses, Cat Power, Phosphorescent and early My Morning Jacket.
Signed to Misra Records in the US and Monotreme in the European Union, these days the Low Lows tour regularly on both continents. Their live shows are loud, electric & visceral. The BBC called their 2008 live session "absolutely beautiful... one of our favorite sessions of the year. Marvelous" & the magazine El Pais declared a recent Spanish performance "monstrously sad and brilliantly anachronistic... sparkling, slightly surreal rock icons that seem to have been sculpted out of white noise. Like werewolves mutating, feedback drips from freshly exposed fangs... Then suddenly they return to us, playing pretty, remorseful songs about the carnage caused". Recently the band has performed songs for Austin City Limits (Stage Left) television, & on September 13th a festival appearance at All Tomorrow's Parties will kick off a series of west-coast American tours leading to the release of their 3rd full-length.
