Low

Duluth

Low formed in Duluth, Minnesota, early in 1993. Alan Sparhawk, who had played in Zen Identity, a band from Superior, Wisconsin, began improvising quiet music with the bassist John Nichols, and Mimi Parker joined them. Sparhawk and Parker had met in grade school in Clearbrook, Minnesota, and married in 1990. Her first kit for the band was a snare, a cymbal and a floor tom, played mostly with brushes, and the two sang together over it. Their early records were filed as slowcore, a label the band disliked. AllMusic's Jason Ankeny called the music "delicate, austere, and hypnotic."

Zak Sally replaced Nichols in 1994, the year Kramer produced the debut, I Could Live in Hope, for Vernon Yard, an offshoot of Virgin. Kramer also made Long Division (1995). For The Curtain Hits the Cast (1996) they went to Seattle to work with Steve Fisk. Over the Ocean became a college radio hit and MTV premiered its video, while near the end of the album sat the nearly fifteen-minute Do You Know How to Waltz?.

Kranky and Sub Pop

After that record the major-label money ran out and Low moved to Kranky. Steve Albini recorded Secret Name (1999) and Things We Lost in the Fire (2001), and Trust (2002) was made in Sacred Heart, a church in Duluth. A Christmas EP came out in 1999, and their hymn-like Little Drummer Boy was later used in a Gap television advert. In July 2003 they toured Europe with Radiohead, and that September a limited ten-inch on Vinyl Films carried the first version of Murderer.

Low signed to Sub Pop in 2004, the year their own Chairkickers' label issued the three-disc rarities box A Lifetime of Temporary Relief. Dave Fridmann produced The Great Destroyer (2005), but Sparhawk cancelled a tour that year because of depression, and later said he had been depressed, malnourished and delusional on the road. In October Sally left and Matt Livingston took over on bass.

Machines and a church

Drums and Guns (2007), Fridmann's second record with them, set the usual instruments aside for loops and drum machines. Its songs dwell on violence, which Sparhawk connected to current events while insisting the record was not political. Mojo said it sounded like no one else on the planet. David Kleijwegt's documentary You May Need a Murderer took its title from a line in Murderer in 2008, the year Livingston left and Steve Garrington joined. In 2010 Robert Plant recorded their Monkey and Silver Rider on Band of Joy.

C'mon (2011) took them back to Sacred Heart. Its first video, for Try to Sleep, starred John Stamos, and its second was for Parker's Especially Me. The Invisible Way followed in 2013, but at Rock the Garden in Minneapolis that June they left the new songs aside and played Waltz alone, for 27 minutes.

Hey What

BJ Burton produced the last three albums, Ones and Sixes (2015), Double Negative (2018) and Hey What (2021). Double Negative was Uncut's album of the year and later appeared on Pitchfork's list of the best albums of the 2010s. Garrington left in 2020, and late that year Parker was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Low carried on as a duo, and Hey What, the only album the two made alone, was Pitchfork's fifth best record of 2021 and was nominated for a Grammy for its engineering.

They played their last show at the Water Is Life Festival in Duluth on 4 September 2022. Parker died on 5 November, aged 55, and NPR's Stephen Thompson wrote that her voice was a light that could never go out. In June 2023 Sparhawk confirmed that the band had ended with her. He has since recorded with his son Cyrus as Damien, alone, and with Trampled by Turtles. Setlist.fm logs more than 1,500 Low shows, the Internet Archive holds 260 tapes because the band let fans record, and in 2024 The Flenser released Your Voice Is Not Enough, a tribute album dedicated to Parker.

Low is and was Mimi.

Alan Sparhawk, 2023