Low - C’Mon

There are so many differences between Low’s latest release, ‘C’Mon’ and their previous, 2007’s ‘Drums and Guns’, that it’s hard to know where to start. From a simple perspective; the latter introduced a new, minimal and also very direct sound to the band’s palette. Its subject, the Iraq war, isn’t so much on the forefront of political talk anymore, therefore ‘C’Mon’, although similarly bitter, sees something of a moving on from the occupancy.

‘C’Mon’ is the bearded, level-headed stranger that ‘Drums and Guns’ just happens to bump in to. It’s as much of a u-turn as when ‘Drums and Guns’ itself followed up the anthemic-rock of 2005’s ‘The Great Destroyer’. Artists like PJ Harvey and Radiohead often get credit for their unpredictability and manoeuvring of sound, but Low are up there with the best at doing the unthinkable.

‘C’Mon’ itself doesn’t ignore the band’s records of old, however. In actual fact, it revisits a sound many thought had been put to sleep. Although much more at ease on this occasion, the band revisit 2001’s ‘Things We Lost In the Fire’; the most haunting album of their career, arguably their masterpiece.

Lyrics such as “life’s too short to be your clown” and “things we turn our back on when we’re older / only drag us back into our bed” give off the dark semblance of its ancestor, but the actual sound this album harbours is much more in line with a more breezy, less paranoid spirit. ‘You See Everything’’s pumping, furrowed-brow chorus is the direct opposite to its drifting, lullaby-like verses. ‘Done’, though deeply moving, feels like a tender swansong (‘Nothing But Heart’ does a similar job); like one of those moments when everything seems right, the footsteps you’re taking, the birds that flutter above you – you’re suddenly in this short-lived element where nothing’s wrong. That seems a fairly apt emotion for Low to be portraying, considering much of the band’s songwriting duties are spent looking downcast and pained at their surroundings.

And this isn’t some kind of “at peace”, epiphany of a record; no way. Alan Sparhawk and co. maintain their melancholic disposition, only this time it’s surrounded by fluttering arpeggio guitars, adhering at times to a full-on, arena-suited sound, other times to a more sparse, sedated feel. The album’s most effective track is ‘Especially Me’, a brooding, gradually building effort, and the thickest, darkest effort on ‘C’Mon’. And that says something about the record itself – that however much the band try to remove themselves from certain fragments of their sound, like the lyric mentioned above, those remnants will “only drag” the band “back into” their bed.