Low

A conversation with Alan Sparhawk

(March 2007)

Interview by Adam McKibbin

Photograph by Tim Soter

Dead soldiers and dead babies—they’re about all that’s still able to shock us, and they both make an appearance in the very first verse of the second album of the “Sub Pop / Dave Fridmann / concertgoers-wearing-earplugs” phase of Low’s impressive and individualistic career.  Drums and Guns provokes and exorcises throughout, while turning the volume down somewhat on its predecessor, The Great Destroyer.  Here, the core mood remains “vintage Low,” but it’s buried and bullied by ominous effects, raw production and experimental zeal.  Criticized at times in the past for being too opaque, they underscore some of their current themes very clearly on the oddly compelling video for “Breaker” (a standout track), in which frontman Alan Sparhawk ravages a chocolate cake while wearing a military jacket—consuming and consuming to the point of apparent self-destruction, then consuming some more.

Sparhawk took the time recently to talk to The Red Alert about the inspirations and new songwriting approaches behind Drums and Guns, the threat of misinterpretation, and finding hope in an unexpected place.

When you name an album Drums and Guns and you start off by singing about soldiers who are going to die, some people are going to think – regardless of what follows – that it’s entirely a capital-p Political album.  Do you cringe when people say “This Low song means this, this Low song is anti­-that,” or do you think that all interpretations are equally valid?

I guess I feel like once a song is out of our hands, it’s up to someone else.  Sometimes you can kind of cock your eye at interpretations that people will have, but that’s to be expected.  We probably have less of an understanding of what our records are about than people might think.  Without intending to sit down and make a record addressing those kinds of things, I guess we inadvertently did so.  That particular song (“Pretty People”), when we recorded it and pondered “Where is this going to be?  It’s obviously going to attract a certain interpretation,” we felt… we might as well get it out of the way (laughs).  Really establish things at the beginning.  I guess there’s been a lot of discussion about it being political or a commentary on social ailments—but I feel like it’s going beyond politics.  In my worst mood, I feel that politics is all about lies, and convincing people to do what you want them to do, and maintaining control over them.  There’s the question of killing—is man justified in killing someone else, and what is it that makes one feel justified?  That seems sort of beyond politics…not to make our music seem grander than it is.

No, I know what you mean.  As a listener, I felt like the album was shaped by what we see in the headlines more than it was overtly about that.

Yeah, and I would definitely admit that the record is a product of the times—and social and moral issues.  The buildup of that subject in my mind, I guess, is sort of spilling forward on this record.  As cautious as we are about it, it just seemed to go there.

I saw you guys at the Troubadour here in L.A. about a year ago, and “Pretty People” was the concert opener then, and, as you mentioned, now it’s the natural lead-off track on the record.  How did you approach the track sequencing from there?  Does it come naturally or does it kind of torment you?

I’m kind of constantly baffled by sequencing an album.  When it goes well, I really am convinced it’s a complete accident.  (laughs)  On this record, luckily, we knew that “Pretty People” would be first.  Going into “Belarus,” I think we wanted to establish that we were using some different elements and different sounds. 

Were most of the songs broken in live at some point?  “Pretty People” sounds close to how I remember it—did other songs undergo more radical transformation?

I’d say we’ve been playing at least half of them for awhile, even a year or two ago.  That affected it, but not in the way you’d expect.  I think as we were going to do the record, we felt that if we approached it the way we always do, the way we approach things live, then we already know what it’s going to sound like.  We’ve been making records that way for a long time.  Setting those things aside and trying to find other sounds we like…that was the significant difference in how we approached it.

Well, using “Dragonfly” as an example, do songs like that tend to start more stripped-down and straightforward, and then the effects and disquieting atmosphere get figured out later?

Yeah, in the past we had done it that way.  We’d start with the raw song, work it out, and then go in and say “How do we embellish this?  How do we manipulate the texture of this?”  On this one, we didn’t so much go in and say “Let’s find some interesting noises to put on the song” – it was more “Will this weird noise actually establish the musical direction?”  I think in the past we used the textures and studio-type things as embellishments, and this time we actually used them as the parts.

That’s interesting.  And did you know that you were going to work with Dave Fridmann again for this album, or was it contingent on the type of material that emerged?

I think after Great Destroyer we pretty much knew that we’d probably go work with him again.  It seemed like it went well and there were some avenues that opened up the first time we played with him, and I knew that would be helpful for what we wanted to do next.  We don’t plan too far ahead, generally, but as the songs were coming together, Fridmann was always the first choice.

I wanted to jump topics and talk about your school project in Kenya.  The note you have on your website right now struck a chord with me—you know, look around for a minute but then go do something better with your time.  It’s easy to be paralyzed by the sheer bulk of terrible situations and that fear that nothing will change, but with this particular undertaking in Kenya, you can see a palpable effect.  Does that ease the paralysis about things going to hell?

Well, there’s certainly the theory that as society is going to bits, in the desperate search for meaning or some sort of foothold in trying to become better, sometimes the simple, “go in, get it done, finish it” act is really attractive.  You know, it’s an attractive thing to think “Okay, I can go put these resources into this thing, and help out this thing that’s very, very far away from me, and then I can come back over here and feel like I’ve done something—and never touch it again.”  That’s a very real thing, there’s a real draw to it.  But it doesn’t work that way.  A project like this, it obviously digs into you more, and affects you in many more ways than you’d think.  I guess from my perspective, it’s kind of like you said, there’s a certain hope in the concept of looking around and going “I know this guy that does this and through that we can help!”

We reference this on the website, but basically, a friend of ours has been going over to Kenya for a number of years, and he’s been getting to know this particular village.  It was as simple as going to him and saying “Hey, we’re going to do a few shows and raise some money.  What could be done to help the people in the village with this amount of money?”  The huge surprise was that we can build a whole school.  That was the explosion to me.  What?  You take this amount of money and make this amount of an effect in the world?  It’s that easy?  You kick yourself, and it changes your perspective.  You start looking at what you do every day.  I’m not the first person to go to Africa and come home with these concepts to talk about—but, man, it’s amazing.  As many clichés as come flying out of my mouth about it…it really changes you, to be serving someone and helping in some small way.