Low – “Drums and Guns” (2007)

This is turning into a bit of vintage year, and the new album by the National hasn’t even come out yet.

I wasn’t a fan of 2005’s “The Great Destroyer” – Dave Fridmann’s production killed it for me. There were some good songs but somehow, it didn’t give me the chills the way a good Low record used to.

Now this record doesn’t give me the chills either. This utterly fucking terrifies the wits out of me. Take “Breaker” (wrongly ascribed as “Cake” in my last entry). Kicking off with ‘Our bodies break/and the blood just spills and spills’ keened over deadpan handclaps and a spluttering beatbox with the percussion and vocals panned hard left and right respectively, broken up only by a messy squall of guitar. “Dragonfly” is set over a loop that mid-nineties Swans would have done credit to and the harmonies have a raw immediacy that feels like Sparhawk and Parker are singing straight into your ear.

Distracting, alienating electronics are scattered all over the record but always to good purpose. Sometimes, it feels like there’s just a wash of white noise in the background and those voices. When drums do appear – and you won’t really notice until ‘Sandinista’, it’s a low, martial brush right up against the insides of your speaker cones. Violence and images of mental fracture are everywhere – ‘The streams are bright, rosy red’ ‘All soldiers must/All little babies must die. Song titles include “Murderer” and “Violent Past”. The former passes on a gentle challenge to God (‘Lord/You may need a murderer/someone to do your dirty work’) over a rising roll of snare and bass pulse. It’s the closest thing here to ‘traditional’ Low but transformed, recast by all that’s gone before.

At the risk of sounding grandiloquent, it’s music fit for the times. More challenging, sparser, tougher – ice on a battlefield, wind through a broken window. The voice of a unassuming but frightening stranger telling you the truth.

Low’s homepage is at http://www.chairkickers.com/