LISTENING TO - Hey What by Low

The album Hey What ends as it begins with a symphonic crescendo of beautifully orchestrated kerrangs of noise. Heavily compressed bass sounds, fuzzy edged guitar reverbs, thunderous drums and drones, electronic ticks,tape loops and wailing tones coming at you from all directions. Over the top is the glorious ravishing vocal harmonies of Alan Sparrowhawk and Mimi Parker. Weaving a musical majesty rarely heard since The Cocteau Twins ceased to exist.

There is a lot to be discovered on this album. I find it an intensely moving listening experience. The soundscapes Low paint are huge, expansive, liberating ones. I'm tempted to say spiritual, in the sense that the effect of it is a hopeful and uplifting one, as if it releases something previously imprisoned or weighed down.

The track Disappearing and the albums opening track White Horses are representative indications of the sonic world a Low album currently inhabits.

 .

And yet picking out individual tracks like this does not entirely convey the overall form that this album takes. Each song moves through connecting interludes that bring you almost seamlessly into the next track. Its a type of song cycle.

I'm beginning exploring Low's back catalogue of twelve previous albums. A listen to Things We Lost In The Fire from 2001 reveals an apparently different sparse and generally acoustic sound. Bundled in with the late nineties 'slowcore' sub genre, there appears to have been quite a stylistic shift in Low along their twenty five year history as a band. 

Hey What is an identifiably progressive development. It cranks up a massive wall of sound from the embryonic foundations of their previous 2018 album Double Negative. That album is a more lyrical, plaintive and romantically intimate offering. By comparison Hey What possesses this awesome magnificence, the scale and glittering urban sophistication of a huge skyscraper backlit by a gorgeous sunrise.

However, in the way they carefully place their voices then allow a beautifully sparse soundscape to expand behind it, there is some continuity between what they are exploring now with their earlier work.. They may have been more low-fi and subdued, but the sense of drawing you into a whole other realm is still present. Its just that with Hey What without any sense of bombast or an overinflated concept, they've sculpted with much larger musically imposing forms and flown high with them. This album has such a beauty to it, I find it pretty much flawless.

CARROT REVIEW - 8/8