Low
Songs for a Dead Pilot (1997)
35:46
Technically this 'album' is listed as an EP on the band discography.

Every music lover has a collection of songs that they want to inflict upon their friends and people they care about. This is one of those groups/albums/songs for me, especially Born by the Wires, a song with over 7 minutes of a simple guitar chord played every 8 seconds.

Discovery
I first heard Low in the printmaking studio of the Design Center on the Iowa State Univirsity campus. This was several years after the original Funky Art Chick™ introduced me to Chet Baker and re-introduced me to Leonard Cohen. But again, I was in that studio and a neo-Funky Art Chick™ had some music playing that just blew me away with the stripped-down simplicity and the power of it's lush minimalism.

I bought the album the next day.

Identification
A snowy bare-tree landscape, and a human head from Gray's Anatomy, skin stripped, illuminating the pathways of the veins throughout the head. Serene, isolated, cold.

The Band
From Duluth, Minnesota, this album was recorded in their home (Alan and Mimi are married).
Mimi Parker: Percussion, vocals.
Zak Sally: Bass.
Alan Sparhawk: Guitar, Keyboards, Vocals.

They are accompanied on this album occasionally by:
The Flag Day Strings:
Jason Childs: Cello
Cassandra Legge: Cello
Tresa Ellickson: Viola

Chris Freeman: Keyboard on "Hey Chicago".
Bethany Legge is the baby on "Condescend".

The Music
Low described themselves very well: "songs stripped to their bare essentials: slow tempos, quiet voices, powerful lyrics, and minimal instrumentations".
Their songs are almost instantly recognizable, with Alan and Mimi's ethreal intonations of loss and pain, over a very minimal but hugely lush and gorgeous instrumentations. Mimi's 'percussion' is a snare drum and a cymbal, different sticks n brushes, and a towel to put over the snare for a deeper sound. The lyrics are simple enough to be included in this review without overdoing it. Low plays slow....rave music is perfect for the rush of ecstacy, marijuana music is slower. Low is so slow that it is too slow for a pot high.
Low can occasionally be good for background music, though "Born by the Wires" on this album would probably stop everything due to the tension it creates. Before I was able to decypher the lyrics, other Low albums would be good relaxing into sleep music. But now that I know what is being said, I'd be scared of hauting dreams. (One of the "advantages" of being deaf in one ear is that you never learn the lyrics on the first 100 listens.)
Low's subjects are a poetry of cold dark gray intentions, but they don't particularly strike me as particularly appealing to the generic "Goth" crowd. Though I love them and also like The Smiths, Bauhaus, The Sisters of Mercy, etc. Perhaps Low shares some subject matter with the old school goth groups (certainly very little with Marilyn Manson (are they still around?)) but very little of the posturing and pagaentry of those. Mimi and Alan are a couple of Mormons, ferchrist sakes!
I can listen to "Born by the Wires" over and over, knowing that the strumming comes at 5:13. A single note repeated, because it is beautiful. At a performance a Spin.com, Hollis, the baby daughter of Alan and Mimi sat for the performance with an angelic expression on her face...this is music that doesn't disturb the infant child of the performers. But it's also often about pain and sorrow, the sort of music to commit a quiet suicide to. As if Morissey had Leonard Cohen's talent for poetry and wrote lyrics for Kronos Quartet.


Tracks
1. Will The Night 3:06
2. Condescend 5:10
3. Born by the Wires 13:26
4. Be There 4:42
5. Landlord 6:47
6. Hey Chicago 2:40

Checking the disc for the length of the songs and the album, I was really surprised that it is only 36 minutes long. It listens much longer than than.

1. Will The Night 3:06
Musical winds blowing, played through an echoing distant speaker system, such as in a high school auditorium. Instrumental, pale and minimalist. No recognizable instruments, what must be a keyboard played from the other side.
Somewhere, in there is apparently lyrics, though I forgot til I was reminded by the lyrics posted on the website http://www.chairkickers.com/ . You can barely make them out. Mimi back in the distance, sounding almost like Julie Cruise on one of the Twin Peaks soundtracks.
Will the night last forever / Stay by my side / Cause tonight, together / would be divine
But once it's gone / Your face to hide / Against the sun / The moon / Am I on the other side
So blind / So long / good bye / good night

2. Condescend 5:10
4/4 time means 4 beats in 4 seconds. Lush string work accompanying this one. Before I listened carefully to thin one, I always thought that Mimi was singing something supportive and inspirational. But it's really the song of someone hanging around waiting for their lover to fail to build up her own ego. A slow revelling in anticipated schadenfreude.
to a point / you will fail, / so i'll condescend.
without doubt / you will fail, / then i'll condescend.
at a point / i will fail, / still i condescend.
to a point / you will fail, / so i'll condescend--
then i'll condescend--
still i condescend.
I've dated people like that.

3. Born by the Wires 13:26
The vocals by Mimi are soft and strained, a woman stands in the dark, holding a candle, a ghost?
Barely any percussion, mostly just guitar work, in what sounds like 8 beats per measure. 12..5...
From about 5:45, the single guitar strum and long fadeout per measure starts. Every strum, you're waiting, anticipating, almost on the edge of your chair, waiting for the next note to happen as the last one fades out. This is the song that sold me on Low, and is the song that can also drive some people crazy (good thing Pookie's not here as I write this review, she'd kill me for listening to this song 5 times in a row). And it's not just a simple note, you can occasionally hear the guitar strings rub against a fret, etc. This brings joy to my ears.
me, i never go / beyond the mile.
me, i sleep in places / where i'm wrong.
born by the wires / born by the wires
me, i'm building castles / never done.
me, i sleep in places / where i'm wrong.
born by the wires / born by the wires

4. Be There 4:42
The keyboards in this sound like an old Hammond Organ, where a held note wavers and wavers (and Low holds and holds it), with a bass kick that almost sounds like part of the mechanism of it but can't be. A little light guitar work floats on top, sounding almost like a toy.
For all the soft, slow, minimalist talk, this song really does build up speed by the end, with the bass beat climbing louder and louder. This is the first inkling you get to the power that is under the surface of Low's music. You don't need to be a metal band or list the beats per minute in your liner notes to have a song with power.
vocals by Mimi and Alan simultaneously
i don't wanna be there / when you're wrong.
i don't wanna be there / when you find out.
i don't wanna be there / when you break glass.
and i don't wanna be there / when they drag you out.
you can't speak backwards [just Alan]
you can't save the animals [just Alan]
and i don't wanna be there / when you're wrong.
and i don't wanna be there / when you find out.
i don't wanna be there / when you break glass.
and i don't wanna be there / when they drag you out

5. Landlord 6:47
After the rushing energy (such is the power of low) of the end of the last song, this one starts out slow again. Very slow. There's some guitar playing and occasional drumb beats, but it isn't really until 3 minutes into it when 'the soft ones' start that
Alan's vocals are way back there, in the other room,
let's / keep / the landlord in mind, as / the microphones pick up / the soft ones.
let's / keep / the carpets in mind, as / the microphones pick up
the soft ones,
the loud ones,
the slow ones,
the bright ones,
the meaningful ones,
the distance,
the good pets,
the wordless,
the stateless.

6. Hey Chicago 2:40
hey chicago
hey chicago
hey chicago: i'm leaving.
hey -- that's what you get for stealing.
Alan (and Mimi for the "hey chicago"s) starts this one of with the lyrics instead of the wait we've become accustomed to. This song must be at the end of the album because it's so much faster than the rest of the album....sort of like waking up from a dream of the womb. Guitar pling-plong pling-plonging along til 1:30 when the lyrical knife cuts tho cord and the last plong is played. The last 1:10 is back to that high school auditorium again, with weird samples and feedback and the like, but only if you really strain to hear.

Conclusion
Lush minimalism that is both fragile, cold, and beautiful. A must have, in my book. Fans of 'difficult' music need "Born by the Wires" for their collection.

Recommended: Yes