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(review written by Wayne Tackabury)
At about the tail end of the North American tour to promote their new album C’mon (and who knows if Mimi will want to do this again?), Low is currently the core husband/wife duo of Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker, joined by sidemen of Sparhawk’s Retribution Gospel Choir side project Steve Garrington (on bass) and Eric Pollard (on keys, not drums as is his RGC duty). Things started a bit shaky, with an out-of-tune Sparhawk on “Point of Disgust” and a rhythm miscue on “Breaker” that almost made the song fall apart, but they quickly fell into glorious Low-style precision after that.
They basically played almost all of C’mon(including the spellbinding standout “Majesty/Magic”) and did an amazing job of playing most of everything you’d want to hear from their back catalog of about the last 10 years or so. Of particular note was an amazing turning back even further to Long Division with Mimi’s “Shame” as part of the encore. As Mimi Parker has matured into wisdom, poise, and maybe even a few extra pounds, it’s deepened and amplified her voice nicely: some of the C’mon stuff from her sounded almost bluesy (but as a consequence she can’t hit her magical soprano accompaniments on “Last Snowstorm of the Year” that showed up on Trust, oh well).
Low are amazing in how they command an audience into hushed silence-Garrington’s light tapping in time with his loafers was sometimes the loudest sound in the room. Mimi Parker can fill a room with glorious blissful reverberation with barely moving her lips. And it’s easy to overlook just how good and versatile a guitarist Alan Sparhawk really is with the focus on harmonies- he can turn from Neil Young-like roar to Phil Manzanera-like spectral flares effortlessly within the same song. Their restraint of any performance overplay is almost creepily effective, and they didn’t seem to notice there even was an audience until towards the end of their regular set. And when they did return after the regular set and were peppered with shouted requests, I think they nearly honored all of those, and played five songs in the encore, opening with a glorious “Sunflowers” and the very Galaxie 500-like “Canada.” Don’t miss Low, this might be your last chance.
Marissa Nadler opened, and had guitar/bass foil Carter Tanton on stage for most of the set, providing some tremelo’d guitar figures and quiet bass nudges. Nadler’s strength are two-fold; her incredibly bewitching vocal sounds, and her strange, improbable blend of economical songwriting that somehow is epic in its storytelling. She played a slew of new material, and while a false start here or stubborn lyric page there halted the songs at times, it was once again a radiant performance.
More photos of both bands can be seen at tinnitus photography
