Volume, feedback, distortion — where would rock be without them? Unfortunately, for many bands these tools have become ends in themselves, and the guitar-bass-drums vocabulary of “alternative rock” is quickly becoming a cliche.
Enter the Duluth, Minn., trio Low. Using these same instruments, Low tread softly, as though in constant fear of waking any sleeping baby within earshot of their amplifiers. Guitarist Alan Sparhawk occasionally uses a delay box, but that’s about as gimmicky as the group gets. Zak Sally plays bass while Mimi Parker keeps time on a drum kit consisting of a single snare and a cymbal. Not much more is needed for a group that plays as though life were one long slow-motion replay of a sleepy, snowed-in Sunday afternoon.
If that sounds like an unpromising formula for a single, let alone the two albums and an EP that Low have released in the last two years on the Vernon Yard label, the band members felt pretty much the same way as they first began experimenting with becoming the slowest, quietest band on earth.
“At first we did it just to say `we played Duluth once or twice and really annoyed people,”‘ Sparhawk says with a laugh. “But as we started to play we saw some possibilities. We were excited using tools that hardly anyone out there was using.
“It was like being a kid and finding a whole new set of colors to paint with. By playing things slowly, quietly and sparsely, we found we were able to pull out tricks that other bands had used and apply them in a whole new way. Even something like normal pop structure, when applied to our songs, people are forced to hear that structure in a different way. “
It’s why Low’s dirge-like cover of “Transmission” is one of the more intriguing moments on the recent Joy Division tribute album, “A Means to an End” (Virgin). The track reappears on Low’s “Transmission” EP, due out this month.
“We’re big Joy Division fans, though that’s not necessarily my favorite track of theirs,” Sparhawk says. “To cover something like `The Eternal’ or `Ceremony’ would seem at first glance more appropriate for us, but then what do we do with it? . . . We had been playing `Transmission’ as part of our live set off and on for a couple of years, and I think we approached it from enough of a different angle to make it worth doing.”
If the group’s sound seems inherently limited, it’s not a major concern for Sparhawk. The band’s 1994 debut, “I Could Live in Hope,” is its lushest, with an intoxicating, reverb-drenched sound that evokes “Today,” the 1988 debut of the New York trio Galaxie 500. Both records were produced by Shimmy Disc label founder Kramer.
Low’s 1995 follow-up, “Long Division,” was also produced by Kramer, but explores a sparser, more minimal approach. The “Transmission” EP follows this course even more stringently, with a pair of tracks recorded by Chicago’s Steve Albini, noted for his dry, natural sound.
“In a way, we’re trying to minimize the distractions that get in the way of hearing each other — it’s amazing what different tones and harmonies you can get out of three instruments when there’s not something burying them,” Sparhawk says.
It’s an approach that can make for some edgy concert experiences, particularly if a noisy, beer-swilling audience is in no mood to succumb to Low’s hypnotic sway.
“It’s aggravating, and we try to fight the urge to play louder, because it always ends up feeling like a cop-out,” Sparhawk says. “The most nerve-wracking part is getting to that quiet, subtle place. But once we’re there, it’s very exciting.”
Low headlines Saturday at the Double Door.
– Though Peter Tork’s arrival in town this weekend (see the profile in today’s Tempo section) may seem like an aberration, the Monkees have never gone away.
Rhino Records, the highly respected California archives label, recently completed a massive reissue program, including putting out all nine Monkees’ albums on CD, as well as three volumes of outtakes, a home video version of the Monkees experimental movie “Head,” and a boxed set of all 58 episodes of “The Monkees” television show.
“Yeah, they were hokey, but in a cool way,” says Colleen Andersen, product manager of the Monkees reissues at Rhino. “They’re like Opie and Andy Griffith in that we never seem to grow tired of them.”
Andersen says a recent Monkees’ “Greatest Hits” album is selling at a pace of more than 2,000 copies a week, and that the $300 Monkees video box sold out nearly its entire 3,000 copies in six weeks. “I don’t think we’ll see the interest fall off as long as the generation that grew up with them is around,” she says. A Monkees 30th anniversary tour involving all four original members is being planned for summer.
The group was actually a TV show before it became a rock band, presaging the video-driven marketing of the MTV era. In one of the most phenomenal 13-month runs in the record business, the Monkees released no less than four albums between October 1966 and November 1967, all of which hit No. 1. The group had considerable high-powered help: Bob Rafelson, who later directed “Easy Rider” and “Five Easy Pieces,” came up with the idea to convert the Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night” into a sitcom, and there’s little doubt that without seasoned session musicians and songwriters Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart the Monkees as musicmakers would be long forgotten.
But no matter who underwrote their success, composed their songs or played on their records, the Monkees’ jingles are difficult to deny. The individual albums are terribly slight, but the recently issued “Greatest Hits” on Rhino is a solid 20-song overview and all the Monkees anyone but the completely misguided will ever need. There are a couple of missteps, notably the unintentionally insensitive ode to homelessness “D.W. Washburn” and the hipster babble of “Goin’ Down.” And virtually everything sung by Davy Jones is insufferable. But Micky Dolenz was a passably versatile vocalist, Michael Nesmith an adept tunesmith when given the chance (“Mary, Mary,” “Listen to the Band”) and the invisible Tork innocuous.
– The Smashing Pumpkins had to rush back to Los Angeles to reshoot their video for “1979” this week before departing for a tour of Latin America. The video was completed last week, only to be lost by a technician who placed the tape atop his car and then drove off, presumably off a cliff, once he realized what he’d done.
