Low Interview

Alan Sparhawk (pic Randy Bacon)

Hans Fruck talks to Low singer Alan Sparhawk about pessimism, politics, and holding on

Since its inception in 1993, Low, helmed by husband-and-wife team Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker, has become famous for its melancholy, sculpted minimalism and gorgeous two-part harmonies. Perhaps only a band as steeped in beauty as Low could produce a record as dark-hearted and disconsolate as Drums and Guns and still expect people to listen.

The band is gearing up for a tour of Australia in January. Speaking from his home in Duluth, Minnesota, Sparhawk says he’s happy with how Drums and Guns has been received on tour by audiences in the US and Europe. But he’s less sanguine about the reception it’s had in the US music media. He describes, amusingly, picking up and reading an industry magazine: ‘Sure enough, they had The Best Fifty Records of the Year. And I looked in there, and we’re not in there. And I was thinking, “C’mon, man! That was one of the weirdist records that came out last year! What the heck? What’s wrong with you people?” I thought it was a pretty challenging and innovative record, and I think – at least in America – people just didn’t get it. People in Europe got it.’

Certainly the album’s studio-driven drum loops and its electronic flourishes are daring reinventions of songs Low had already performed live many times. This marked a change in approach for the band, encouraged by producer Dave Fridmann. In the past, recording was a matter of ‘time and money’, Sparhawk says. ‘You go in, you set up, you play through it, you do your vocals, you get outta there.’ But this time the band took a different approach, stripping the songs back to the vocals and then rebuilding them in the studio. ‘This is the first record where we felt like “Let’s see what happens if we take away those things that, at least in our minds, we really count on”. See what’s left when all we have is our voices and whatever rough skills we have with drum machines and some mikes.

‘Intentionally stepping into the dark’ is how Sparhawk describes it. The band found the experience scary as well as liberating. ‘Knowing that there were certain things that we had control over and certain things that we allowed not to have control over, and see how it went... I can’t deny – we didn’t go in with this confidence: “OK, let’s throw this away, and everything’s great!” It was definitely really hard, and the first few days felt a lot like stabbing in the dark, and kicking yourself.’

The result was Drums and Guns and its laceratingly beautiful songs about murder, mortality, and blood. Critics have persistently described the record as ‘political’, but Sparhawk rejects that label. ‘I think the word political, as it’s applied to music and to art, or whatever, paints it into a corner. And I guess, to me, I think the things I’m dealing with on that – that are being interpreted as political – are more moral questions, and not even existential questions...’ He trails off, seemingly too full of words to properly express them. ‘I dunno. The songs that are making people think that’, he says, ‘are more the songs that are questioning about murder, and what is the right of man to kill? And what is this process that makes people think it’s right for them to kill someone else? You know, god justification – or whatever.’

He may not see Drums and Guns as political, but Sparhawk doesn’t baulk at talking politics, though he agrees many artists are discouraged from voicing their opinions. ‘People sorta jump, sorta pooh-pooh artists when they finally flip out and go to their blog and say “I can’t take it any more!” And people are like “Aw, poor Conor Oberst”, or whoever else, or whoever’s bringing it up. It’s unfortunate. It’s too bad because basically this generation needs to redefine and rewrite the language of protest. They have to find their own voice for it. It’s impossible to use the old terms, the old approaches, without it looking so clichéd and worn out. The straights have been spending decades here trying to make protest look like a bunch of crazies.’

But this, Sparhawk thinks, only makes organised protest all the more necessary. ‘That kind of unity is what America needs, especially right now. And I need to be honest, I just don’t think the structure of society is such that that’s even gonna happen. The people who are angry are going to the mall and shooting people, instead of going “Jeez, I’m not gonna shop at Walmart any more”.

Whether Drums and Guns is political or not, it’s indisputably pessimistic. Even so, Sparhawk denies that he’s lost faith in people. ‘But I’m pessimistic about where things are headed’, though he adds in the next breath ‘How can you be pessimistic when it’s something that we’ve always known was coming? And it’s odd to be standing there watching. You can’t just stand by idly, of course. But I really feel like the trajectory of where America and the West is headed now – philosophically, economically, and morally, and nuclearly – we’re doomed at this point.

‘I guess it is pessimism,’ he concedes, ‘except that there’s something that I really believe in about human beings and Americans. So I think that somehow there might be some way that we can pull up. Or whatever’s left after it all goes to shit, it might actually be worth a crap, and might actually be worth holding on and raising your children for.’

When Sparhawk says ‘holding on’, it has extra resonance. In 2005 after Low cancelled a tour, Sparhawk explained on the band’s website that he’d been diagnosed with everything from ‘post-traumatic stress disorder, ADHD, bipolar whatever, suicidal depression/anxiety to paranoia, laziness, OCD, and good old-fashioned two-faced asshole-ness’. Plainly, it was a dark time for him and the band.

When asked now if creativity could be a corollary of his inner turbulence, Sparkhawk’s not sure. ‘All I know is when you go nuts everything gets messed up. When you lose your mind, it messes with everything. It goes as deep as possible’, he says heavily. ‘If you’re a person with religious beliefs, or you’re a creative person, or if you’re a person who has issues with fear of authority, or fear of women, or something like that, it’s gonna get really thrown around when you go crazy.

‘So I can’t deny that certainly that experience has made an impact on me. I can’t see where it is. But I think surviving it, so far, makes me feel a little more brave. But I’ve been lucky to have things come along in my life that have made me feel, make me hope, you know – whether it’s being married to someone great, or having children, or making music that challenged me.

‘I’ve been lucky to have that.’

Low perform at the East Brunswick Club on Jan 11 & 12. (The first show is a performance of Things We Lost in the Fire as part of the Don’t Look Back concert series.)