Album Review: Low - The Invisible Way

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Minnesotan luminaries Low's existence, and tenth album, The Invisible Way, is the perfect vehicle to celebrate their expanding horizons. Produced by Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, the album opens with Plastic Cup, a warm, rustic affair that shoehorns in all the trio's staples – Alan Sparhawk's absurd yet vivid lyricism, Mimi Parker's reverential backing vocals and understated yet apocryphal drumming – whilst stripping everything else back, warm, rustic and melancholic. Thus the bluster that's been a definitive chapter of their oeuvre since 2005's brilliant The Great Destroyer is shelved, instead focusing on this incredibly beautiful duo, and in doing so effectively looks back over their entire illustrious career. 

Amethyst is at once majestic and soul-destroying, a mirror image of their own July; the swelling piano replaces blazing guitar in So Blue, further augmenting Parker's soaring vocals. In fact Parker assumes the lead for half the album's tracks, the other most notable experimental shift. And it works wonders – Holy Ghost is countrified soul on the Duluth plains, all candlelight and weary restrain, whilst the stellar Just Make It Stop steps up the pace, an elegy of browbeaten defiance (“If I could just make it stop/I could tell the whole world to get out of the way”). On My Own feels like a rollicking affair, before we are finally treated to Sparhawk's raucous guitar dirge, seemingly tipping the hat to a Mister Young.

The Invisible Way may not be their strongest album, but Low are a band that play within increments, having mastered their craft eons ago. The intricacies and warmth that exude from this illustrious pairing continues to exude dividends from repeated listens.