Lovers Lane
In The Flesh

Low Preview

| January 25, 2006

Low
Logan Square Auditorium, Chicago
Friday, January 27, 2006

Eight years after doing the same on the “Owl” remixes, Low lets some friends deconstruct and rebuild it on a new EP.

Either Sub Pop’s inking of Low to a recording contract was a major coup, or the Duluth trio is pulling a Costanza and doing the opposite of what its instincts tell it. According to legend, Low set out as an affront to grunge rock by playing as slowly and quietly as possible. Realizing this was a good way to attract ridicule, it became more and more volatile until after 2002’s Trust when time arrived to sign with the beast, former grunge incubator Sub Pop Records. Last year’s The Great Destroyer confirmed the band’s explosiveness, with the new Tonight The Monkeys Die (Low Remixed) EP’s subject, “Monkey,” its primary ingredient.

Low used to be a deliciously prime remix candidate. Drummer Mimi Parker‘s vocals bathe in a radiant glow and float like Enya on general anesthesia. Cue up a pounding Euro beat behind any of ’em, and you had disco anthems coming out your ears. But the clawing nature of “Monkey” has led all six participants (Fog, Crew Jones, Stephin Merritt, Bob Mould, and The Count) to treat it as an industrial slow burner, with the adaptability of a Senate Republican on a Venezuelan work farm. Fog’s introduces a ruminative guitar figure and tempered electro glitches; Crew Jones adds novelty rap to the song’s repertoire; Merritt gets all magnetic; Mould makes it dance; and Count haunts it. The great difficulty in remix EPs is dissolving your familiarity with the original, but none of these makes much of a case.

His Name Is Alive and Death Vessel will open.

— Steve Forstneger

Click here to download the original version of Low’s “Monkey.”

Category: Stage Buzz, Weekly

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  1. Alicia says:

    Anesthesia is a kind of drug which is given to the patients who are about to undergo an operation where the patients body is to be cut and treated for the diseases of the abnormalities the patient has. Anesthesia is given to the patient just before the operation. anesthesia makes the patient senseless and the patient is deprived of any pain which the patient would suffer during the operation. Thus the doctors can perform the operation easily. Anesthesia is like a boon for the human race, which has mde their miseries and griefs lesser to a great extent.