Low Time

Like all the best stories, Low's is a love story at heart. Guitarist/singer Alan Sparhawk and drummer/singer Mimi Parker met in the fourth grade in their home town of Duluth, Minnesota, and wound up marrying each other nine years ago.

They also happened to share a deep-rooted love of music, and so formed a band, partly out of this experimental desire to play low and slow, but mainly just for fun, christening themselves Low. However, the music gradually took on a life of its own, and 1994 saw them recruit their friend Zak Sally as full-time bassist.
Six albums down the line, they have just released their masterpiece, the hauntingly, achingly beautiful Things We Lost In The Fire. They never dreamed when they started that things would go this far.
"We really just started with the intention of messing around," drawls Alan down a phoneline from Boston."Then we decided to play a show just 'cos we knew it'd be really fun and everybody would hate it. After the show, we decided to put the songs on tape, just for ourselves, and it kept rolling from there. Before we knew it, we were doing a record and playing on towns other than our own, which was just ridiculous. By the third or fourth record, it started to sink in that this is what we do now. I still think that what we do is something only about one percent of the world is gonna get into.
"So this is really strange, and makes me almost question what we're doing. Have we dumbed it down or something? But I still think kids should be listening to rock 'n' roll, not this sad, quiet sombre stuff."
This sad, quiet sombre stuff has been extremely well received on both sides of the Atlantic, though, with critics falling all over themselves to acknowledge its brilliance. However, it is not the happiest album in the world, and around half of its dozen songs seem enfused with a sense of sadness and loss. Alan doesn't totally agree.
"We just had a baby a year ago so on a lot of levels, these songs are very optimistic," he muses. "But at the same time, anyone who has witnessed childbirth knows that the opposite or birth, being death, exists alongside it, and it's very strange to witness that. If we weren't already a band who dwelled on the more sober and serious things in the world before, I think after seeing childbirth, I'm even more focused on those extremes.
"'In Metal' is a happy song," he continues, chuckling, "but a song like 'Sunflower', which sounds happy and all, is about two people who are dead. When I was a kid, I admired that about The Smiths: these were happy, chimy songs, but then you'd listen to the lyrics and they were the most morbid, violent songs I'd ever heard. For the two things to co-exist to me makes total sense."
The little bundle of joy behind the, ahem, happy half of the album, Alan and Mimi's daughter, Hollis, should be celebrating her first birthday around the time you read this. She is currently accompanying her parents on her first world tour, which will take them to Dublin's Olympia Theatre on March 27th, a gig which will be eagerly anticipated by the hordes who packed into Whelan's twice late last year to see them. Alan still plays down their success to date, as if he still hasn't quite come to terms with the fact that Low could be, dare I say it, really good.
"On your side of the world they always make a big deal about how Americans are so self-effacing and self-deflating, but I am serious," he says. "I just can't understand why so many people can listen to our record and think it's any good. I've always felt that there is a certain type of person that's gonna like this and understand it, and that everyone else would go, 'Man, what's wrong with these people? I'm not gonna buy that record.' But things surprise me every once in a while."
He cites the examples of Godspeed You Black Emperor and Elliott Smith as two artists he really admires who have astonished him with the extent of their success.
"Elliott Smith appears on the Oscars singing his song, next to Celine Dion," he chuckles. "What's wrong with the world?"
I venture the opinion that maybe something is finally coming right with the world?
"I hope not," he shrugs. "I think the Backstreet Boys and Oasis always have to exist for people like us to have a reason to do what we do. If we become famous then what's the new punk rock gonna be?"

Things We Lost In The Fire is out now on Tugboat Records. Low play Dublin's Olympia Theatre on March 27th.