Most bands don’t hit a career high on their 11th album, but then Low aren’t most bands. Once dismissed as exponents of minimalist slowcore, the Minnesota trio are helmed by Mormon husband and wife duo Alan Sparhawk (guitar, vocals) and Mimi Parker (drums, vocals), whose love affair with sound, experimentation and each other has seen them become one of the most enduring and beloved alternative rock acts on the planet.
Recorded with engineer BJ Burton, at Justin Vernon’s Wisconsin studio, Ones & Sixes is the sound of a band clearly at the peak of their powers. This time around, the earth-shuddering bass is provided by Steve Carrington, while Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche provides “hand percussion” on a couple of tracks. But the beating heart of Low is provided by Sparhawk and Parker.
Individually, they’re reasonably impressive singers, but together – with their voices intertwining magically – they make musical alchemy, her honeyed tones slipping and stretching sinuously around his more bristly delivery. They build their sonic assault, layer by layer, inspiring the tension between the sweetness of the harmonies and the dissonant percussion on stunning opener, ‘Gentle’; the stately Sixties-esque surf pop of ‘No End’, like an old Beach Boys 78” played at 33”; and the almost 10 minutes of ‘Landslide’, a shoegazing epic where guitar chords crash to earth in tsunami- like waves of raw noise, followed by moments of gently ululating calm.
There’s the beguilingly hypnotic ‘No Comprende’, the deliciously haunting ‘Into You’, complete with the occasional low-end rumble of discontent, and the pristine ‘What Part Of Me’, which proves that they are capable of writing a near-perfect three-minute pop song when the humour takes them. Cream of this magical crop, however, is the magnificent ‘Spanish Translation’, which rivals ‘Dinosaur Act’ as their finest four minutes ever, the lullaby vocals contrasting perfectly with the discordant clamour of the guitar, the Old Testament throb of the bass and thunderclap drums.
Low have broadened their sound palette considerably since their early releases, with syncopated drums and swishes of electronica hissing away in the background throughout this album, especially the trance-inducing space-rock of the closing ‘DJ’. It’s all built around the strength of their songwriting, however, which seems to grow with each album, with the result that Ones & Sixes is not just a highlight of their career to date but one of the albums of the year.