September 14, 2018 / Sub Pop
9.3
(September 18, 2018)
(Note: This review was the top-featured review on the front page of RateYourMusic for a week or so following its original publishing)
Man, Justin Vernon really opened a can of worms back in 2016. Now EVERY iconic indie band is going electronic! Well, there were Dirty Projectors and now this. So three bands are doing it. But god DAMN, if Low’s foray into the world of glitchy pop hasn’t resulted in the most extreme and ambitious change out of all of them; even Bon Iver was still noticeably folk on the bottom of everything; Low have almost completely done away with everything from their original guitar-based sound. Yet it’s still unmistakably them. First of all, you can’t hide Alan Sparhawk or Mimi Parker’s easily-recognizable voiced no matter how much static you distort them with. Second, and most importantly, the original formula, one that’s now been in existence for almost twenty-five years, is still completely there, and that’s exactly what makes the Minnesota trio’s twelfth(!) album such an absolute knockout success. Low already surprised everyone way back in 2001 with Things We Lost in the Fire, releasing their greatest (or at least most successful) album seven years into their studio career. That must have been awesome (I was five; I wouldn’t know). This is better, though. Double Negative isn’t just the greatest band-goes-electronic album of the decade so far; nearly two-and-a-half decades after their somber 1994 debut I Could Live in Hope, Low have released their most realized, ambitious, complex, and greatest album yet.
And what a magnum opus it is! It’s no simple “original formula but now electronic” deal here, it is a completely new direction for the trio. As a whole Double Negative sounds at times like an old glitch classic, Dntel’s 2001 masterpiece Life Is Full of Possibilities. In its example, Low experiment here with slow, drawn-out clouds of big, booming electronic chords that are slowed to a near-halt, constantly fading in and out of existence. And the EXTREMITIES, too! The first few minutes of Double Negative are almost too much for one’s ears upon first listen, a repeated series of blaring, borderline-abrasive swells of deafening static, clouds of synths behind each one, and Alan Sparhawk’s voice just barely managing to escape from the chaos with each massive, repeated climax, only to go right back at it for the next one. In the middle of Quorum, this riveting and powerful introduction, the sound all of a sudden cuts out almost completely, and Sparhawk and Mimi Parker join in a haunting, isolated harmony that buzzes with light distortion and a synthesized, meditative echo. It feels like the song has come to a close, but just as this brief release fades into silence, the distorted, horrific storm envelops us once again, even more intense this time, a constant series of enormous swells. This time around it’s Parker who is struggling to make her voice heard, trying to separate herself from the chaos. She almost succeeds every time; her voice is faint among the noise and her words – if there are any – are inaudible, yet her voice, always on the sideline, feels like just enough to usher us through the storm.
A storm is what Double Negative kind of feels like from time to time. At the very end of Quorum Sparhawk’s voice is left unobscured for one more miniature verse, giving us just enough time to recuperate, until all of a sudden we’re picked right back up with a dark, thudding synthesized bass drum, steadily pounding by itself for over half a minute at the start of Dancing and Blood. After her struggles against the chaos in Quorum, when Mimi Parker begins singing here her voice is given more room to breathe, but is still covered up by layers of glitch and distortion, and what can still be heard of her smooth vocal delivery is presented in stark contrast with the mechanical, marching percussion that continues its relentless drone. Over the course of the next minute or so, more droning synthesizer chords fade into existence, their frequency unsteady like it’s coming from a weak signal, a subtle embellishment on the prominent percussion and Parker’s vocals, which return with slightly more urgency later on. Like much of the album, Dancing and Blood has a substantial minimalist aesthetic, but it doesn’t quite sound like it. Maximalism is more or less out of the question as well. Instead, what we experience is almost, as impossible as it may sound, a combination of both; this is the band making not just songs but soundscapes, composing them out of relatively few different instrumental and vocal forces, yet audibly manipulating and enhancing every single source of sound to its highest possible level. Oftentimes, it seems, purposefully just a tad higher than it can go, yet the results, whether distorted or full on booming or blaring, are all the richer for it.
Dancing and Blood is just over six minutes in length, but only the first four minutes or so are the main section. After the relentless pounding of the Dancing half comes to an end, Sparhawk’s voice is all of a sudden suspended by itself, in midair with a faint ambient drone flashing into existence in occasional bursts. This is the point where Double Negative delves even further into the more experimental areas of the band’s new formula; on top of glitch pop there are significant ambient pop influences as well that break up the album into calmer, more ethereal interludes here and there. Even in this more standstill state, there’s still growth. The Blood portion of the song, the final two minutes of ambience, is a slow and steady buildup of sound; Sparhawk’s isolated vocal drone with its faint electronic counterpart are alone for just thirty seconds or so, and then extra layers of droning electronic tones are added on, growing in volume and warmth leading up into the next song.
The next song in question, Fly, is the most “normal” song on the album yet. Another song in which Mimi Parker is given the main vocal role, there’s another slow, albeit lighter, steady electronic beat that drives the song at an unhurried pace, as well as a faint, fluctuating synthesized bass. The song is also more normal in its structure, making use of a simple verse-and-chorus style, yet it is also the highest point of the album so far, a track that is still in Double Negative‘s glitchy electronic formula, yet is the most recognizable Low song yet, a single moment of comfortable clarity among so much change and activity. Like Dancing and Blood, there’s another, this time shorter, ambient interlude at the very end, where the bass starts fluctuating even more and the melodic chords become more and more faint, leading into the end of the song.
And that’s just three songs into the album; there’s practically a paragraph that could be written about every single track, there’s simply so much going on in each one. Tempest follows the same style as Quorum, but noticeably less abrasive than the opening track in question. This song contains the most distorted vocals on the album yet, to the point where they sound just as electronic as the instrumentals, yet the static of the opening track is done away with, in exchange for a song that is easy on the ears, yet still vibrant enough to cause your headphones to shake. Tempest combined with Always Up, the next track, form a larger ambient section, the album’s second act after the breaking-through-the-door feeling of the first three tracks. After this there’s another more normal Low song in Always Trying to Work It Out, almost a sort of interlude in the middle of the album. After this, The Son, The Sun is both a direct contrast and a compliment, expanding this interlude of a middle section with a track that is almost completely ambient. Dancing and Fire, the one track on the album with recognizable guitar, is a slow and steady buildup of a track, yet never reaches more than an easier-on-the-ears, vibrant blooming of sound at its close. After this, the final three songs on the album, Poor Sucker, Rome (Always in the Dark), and Disarray, close things up on a note that manages to both be the most familiar-sounding set of Low songs, yet are still in line with the rest of the album, with chaos in the background and, in the case of Disarray, a soft, gentle closing ballad with more pounding, Dancing and Blood-esque electronic percussion. Each song can be described in shorter form, yet they’re all still just as vibrant and varied as the rest of the album up until now.
But again, god DAMN. This isn’t even my favorite album of the year so far (I’ll make sure to get to those ones eventually though, don’t worry), but it is by FAR among the most discussable releases. After the serene Ones and Sixes, this album manages to be an extreme and sudden change, yet is also not at all uncomfortable, instead managing to be jarring but in a way that still gently guides you throughout. I’ve seen it described in some professional review as being like a newly-discovered strain of an existing DNA, or something like that (maybe it was Pitchfork. I don’t know), and I couldn’t agree more. My last review was for Mothers’s Render Another Ugly Method, another complete 180 in terms of style, but going from indie folk to post-punk after just one album is one thing. While the new Mothers album required a few listens to get accustomed to, Double Negative manages to be an even bigger change of sound while still feeling strangely familiar even upon the very first listen. It is without a doubt one of the most ambitious albums of the decade so far, and is just as epic of a result as many of its brethren, but instead of a loud statement of confidence (as can be seen with such similar examples, at least in terms of ambition if not music, as Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy), Double Negative is loud but still hesitant, a style that will appeal to Low’s existing fanbase while its eclecticism and creativity will satisfy anyone looking for another semi-experimental electronic album.
It is more than satisfying to see such a veteran of their scene such as Low come up with such a masterpiece so late into their career, and if anything Double Negative also proves that they’re not just still able to make good albums, but their creative spirit is, if anything, working harder now than ever before. In a year of so many big, bold, and confident releases, the combination of solemness and extremities that is Double Negative is a brilliant come-down of an album that’s still as loud and invigorating, even in its slowest and most ambient moments, as nearly anything else released this year, if not this decade as a whole. A magnificent late-career achievement that has breathed a whole gust of new life into the trio, as well as indietronica as a whole.
Totally Worth It 