Drums and Guns

Drums and Guns
Label: Sub Pop
Length: LP
Media: CD
Format: Album
WorkNameSort: Drums and Guns
Low has always taken their damn sweet time to get anywhere. Anyone who’s taken their previous albums on a road trip deserves to get to his destination three days late. Take this one with you and you’ll end up in a ditch. For Drums and Guns, Flaming Lips studio guru Dave Fridmann (who manned Low’s 2005 release, The Great Destroyer) has again produced an album unlike their previous work. The soothing harmonies and warm Ambien tones have been replaced by drum loops, electronic manipulations and creepy, ethereal chants for an assaultive minimalism that refuses to lull itself to sleep ‘ like New Age music for people learning to hate each other. Untamed feedback and unsettling keyboards combine with fewer conventional ‘songsâ?� to raise the spook factor. ‘Sandinistaâ?� is Arabesque; ‘Dust on the Windowâ?� resembles a séance gone bad. In the spirit of Liars and Scott Walker, Low conveys its alienation, sadness and unease in literal sound tones, stripping down and rebuilding its horror hotel from the ground up.

This article appears in Mar 14-20, 2007.