The Middlebury Campus

Issue date: 2/10/05 Section: Arts

What do you love about New York City? We all love something about it, even if it is the simple act of loving to hate it. It's the city of myth and mystery, and of course, the city that never sleeps. Yes, New York tends to make an enormous and lasting impression on everyone who sets foot on its filthy sidewalks surrounded by skyscrapers that block out the sun. Any artist who visits or lives in New York is compelled to write about it - often. PJ Harvey name-dropped sections of Manhattan while recounting her Big Apple escapades in the excellent "Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea." The Beastie Boys dedicated their most recent disappointment of an album to the five boroughs. Leonard Cohen coolly depicts his living situation on Clinton Street in the unforgettably haunting "Famous Blue Raincoat." Low now joins the legions of artists to write about the most ridiculous, exciting, unforgiving and endearing city on this planet.

On Low's seventh album - and first for passé label Sub Pop - "The Great Destroyer," the album climaxes three-quarters of the way through with the seven-minute New York opus "Broadway (So Many People)." Working with producer Dave Fridmann, the man who made the Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev sound so stunningly gorgeous, Alan Spearhawk and Mimi Parker's harmonious voices glide and echo beautifully in the refrain "Where is the laughter?" With shimmering guitars and haunting reverb, Low captures the isolation, confusion and inexplicable warmth that comes from wandering the illuminated New York streets at night. This is the most heartbreaking moment on "The Great Destroyer," and that's saying something, because it delivers the wistful tearjerkers just like the great Low albums that came before it.

The press surrounding "The Great Destroyer" hailed it as Low's "rock" album. Let me be the first to say that the press is full of it (excluding me). Spearhawk occasionally cranks up the amp a little and adds some distortion to the mix, but don't expect a radical departure at all from "Trust" - which is a good thing, a very good thing. Take, for instance, the opening song, "Monkey" (which you can get for free at www.insound.com). It's easily the most sinister song on the album, with a menacing guitar riff cutting through the air as Speakhawk and Parker finish their chorus chant of, "Tonight you will be mine / Tonight the monkey dies." I have no idea what that means, but the guitars sound amazing, so I don't care. From there, the album calms down significantly. Witness the lighter second track, "California," which rides the wave of a pleasant chord progression and gorgeous chorus. Apparently, and I wouldn't know for sure, this song is being used on "The O.C." I wouldn't be surprised. That terrible show helped make the Walkmen a dormhold name, much like the irritatingly overdone "Garden State" made people aware of The Shins. Angry yet? Good. You should listen to some Low to calm yourself down.

"The Great Destroyer" is an album about aging, made by a band far more mature than even the one that created the gentle melancholy of their 1994 debut "I Could Live in Hope." Spearhawk sings about an eventual end to his musical career, and his hearing, on the aptly titled, "When I Go Deaf," crooning: "And, I'll stop writing songs / Stop scratching out lines / I won't have to think / And, It won't have to rhyme / When I go deaf." Coming in at a close second for most heartbreaking moment on "The Great Destroyer" is the penultimate track, "Death of a Salesman." A simple melody is framed by Spearhawk's narrative of a man who chose a career in business over music to raise his family comfortably: "So I did what they said / Now my children are fed / 'Cause they pay me to do what I'm asked / I forgot all my songs / The words now are wrong / And I burned my guitar in a rage." Pass the tissues.

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