Dear listener, I promise I’ll be back with more music in 24’. For now, let me share a personal lesson in music to all of those reading this. Sometimes, *the young* can influence your musical tastes. At the very start of 23’ I met a smart young Zoomer named Fen. Fen is my coworker for context. Before I met Fen, I thought Zoomers were completely unintelligible. Sorry Zoomers, it’s true, I judged all of you. But it was only based on the vast majority of interactions I had had with your generation up to that point. This young man was slightly different from his generation in that he could carry on detailed conversations on politics, environment, and music. In our conversations about music, he asked if I had ever heard of slowcore. I hadn’t. He played some slowcore for me in our company van. I enjoyed some of it and asked for a short-list of slowcore bands. Fen enthusiastically provided it. After listening to slowcore off-and-on for most of 23’, I can tell you I like it a lot. It’s all about quiet beginnings and then some sort of GRAND FINISH. And within this subgenre that I didn’t know existed, is a band called Low, and holy shit do they make some great music! This is a group that started off in 1993 and perished in 2022 with the death of their co-founder Mimi Parker. Starting off with some very restrained and quiet melodies to suit the bar crowds they were originally playing for; this standard band beginning was followed by their own personal boom on college radio and proceeded by a second album and a European tour with Radiohead. Suddenly, the band began to take on electronic influences to supplement their tunes and even started to take a stab at some rather thunderous post-rock jams. While the creative approach of slowcore (as a whole) is generally minimalist and relies on slow tempos to find its structure, this group for nearly three decades attempted to elegantly place as many branches on the slowcore tree as humanly possible without burning out in the process. Talented, poetic and creators of some of the saddest material I listened to in 23’, this group’s extensive catalog more than kept me going from track to track in a frenzy. Having emerged from mere nightclubs in Minneapolis, Low’s legacy is one of eventual international success as their music has been featured in commercials and movies. They also happen to bear the distinction of being one of those bands that you’ve invariably heard in passing but could never put a band name to the tune. If you smash play, you will be treated to Dinosaur Act from their 2001 album Things We Lost in the Fire. Enjoy!
Imagine my surprise when I was doing research for this post and realized that both slowcore and Low were from the 90’s... my generation. Sometimes Zoomers have the information that you just don’t, folks! Thanks Fen, consider my know-it-all millennial ass humbled! I will soon be taking a break from Tumblr to recharge my mental battery. Just wanted to stop and thank the THOUSANDS of occipital lobes that have tuned in for a taste of my personal musical library on Tumblr for the past… going on half a decade! Image source: https://www.uncut.co.uk/features/low-interview-duluth-february-2011-35017/
