Rocktrospectiva: The Beautiful Emotional "Ones And Sixes" Turns 10

Released on 11 September 2015, "Ones And Sixes" was the 11th., studio album by US indie band Low, it was co-produced by the band and engineer BJ Burton, at Justin Vernon's April Base Studios in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. The album also features contributions from Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche. The album artwork was created by artist Peter Liversidge. The album's lyrics were nominated for an AML Award and spawned two singles "Lies" & "What Part Of Me". 

 

Musically, was a shift made itself evident to critics reviewing Ones and Sixes, reaping generally positive assessments. While its predecessor The Invisible Way saw Jeff Tweedy of Wilco handling the production duties, Ones and Sixes would feature Bon Iver associate B.J. Burton producing alongside Low for the first time. The change in technical personnel would result in the trio's sound being "pushed, pulled and wrangled out of shape to devastating effect," "striking a balance between their majestic, slow-moving melancholy and harsher experimental noise."

 

Low's real mastery, and the secret to their decades-long vitality, lies in something more intangible than tempo. They have a preternatural mastery of arrangement and dynamics, an instinct for when and how to pick the exact right moment to lift the volume a bit, to accent a repetitive moment with this synth line or that fuzzed guitar. The steady pace and the melancholy atmospherics are important, but without their keen ear for detail, the music would simply be a haze.

 

Ones and Sixes was a far more interesting record for it. To create their new one, the members retreated deep into rural Wisconsin with producer BJ Burton and recorded at Justin Vernon’s April Base Studios in Eau Claire. It’s hard to tell what might have triggered it, but the band hasn’t sounded this lively in years.

 

The opening track "Gentle" was a discomfiting funeral dirge that sets an unnerving mood early on. The instrumentation combined static bits of industrial percussion with rich, elegant keyboard accents, as Mimi Parker's near-falsetto flutters in and out, sometimes multi-tracked and sometimes padded out with as much reverb as can conceivably be applied. The song's verses feel like free-associative jumbles of words like, "gentle, battle, torture, stable and silence", underscoring the song's fitful, uneasy energy.

 

That mood settled into the album, which otherwise doesn't offer dramatic shifts. Airy, luscious backing vocals and sparse, gritty instrumentation remain the mainstay of Low’s sound, and they are used to wondrous effect on the nearly 10-minute long penultimate track "Landslide". But there's was real immediacy and liveliness to Alan Sparhawk's vocals and playing there was missing from the group's latest  records. His singing was so full and present on songs like "Spanish Translation" and "Lies" that it felt like a renewed bid for your undivided attention. And as much as they were able to make a conventional "pop" song then "No End" is it. 

 

Low reached a comfortable but engaging stride creating music that consistently seems to be at odds with itself. Ones and Sixes  was all at once beautiful, ugly, tense, warm, inviting and repellent. It was an emotional and sonic juggling act where even the slightest bum-note would draw attention to itself. As always with Low, the beauty was all about the details.

 

Ones And Sixes Track List:

 

1. Gentle

2. No Comprende

3. Spanish Translation

4. Congretation

5. No End

6. Into You

7. What Part Of Me

8. The Innocents

9. Kid In The Corner

10. Lies

11. Landslides

12. DJ