low

Record #780: Low – C’Mon (2011)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

On paper, slowcore giants Low don’t seem like the most obvious candidates for an Americana album. This is especially true for those of us who came to the band through the glitchy, atmospheric noise project Double Negative and worked their way backwards through their sparse soundscapes.

And while this album and Double Negative are as dissimilar to one another as anything else in the Low catalog, C’Mon delivers the same sort of minimalist compositions, just augmented by lap steels, fiddles, banjos instead of effects pedals and synthesizers.

Continue reading →

2019: A Year In Review

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 2 Comments

As we sit on the cusp of a new year—and a new decade—it’s become customary to look back and quantify all of the music produced into a neat little list of what’s noteworthy.

While these lists are always bound to vary from person to person and between publications, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so much variation as in 2019. This year was an undeniable banner year for music, with excellent release after excellent release piling up relentlessly without ceasing. If you slipped behind, there was no hope of catching up.

As I look back on the year, I keep being surprised by all the stuff I missed—either ubiquitous barn burners like Lizzo or Lana Del Ray’s NFR or artists I love like Solange and Deerhunter. Even among releases I loved and purchased, quantifying all of it into a top ten list proved a much more difficult task than most years.

And so, as much as I stand by this list, I’m fully aware how flawed a ranked top whatever format is for describing just how magnanimous this year’s musical output was.

Continue reading →