Artist.......: The Low Lows
Album........: Shining Violence
Label........: n/a
Genre........: Indie
Catnr........: n/a
source.......: CDDA
rip.date.....: Dec-14-2007
str.date.....: 000-00-0000
quality......: VBR/44.1Hz/Joint-Stereo
Url..........: n/a

track  title                                          time

 01.   Sparrows                                      04:40
 02.   Raining in Eva                                03:48
 03.   Modern Romance                                04:11
 04.   Elizabeth Pier                                05:14
 05.   Tigers                                        03:59
 06.   Disappearer                                   05:57
 07.   Five Wasy I Didn't Die                        03:01
 08.   It May Be Low                                 04:19
 09.   Honey                                         05:37

                                            Runtime  40:46 min
                                            Size     57,4 MB


Release Notes:

here is something distinctly frozen about The Low
Lows. The songs don't appear to move at all over
their duration, but they are utterly seared in
surges of intensity, of lyrical oddities, of
terrifying pulses and dark corners. It stems partly
from the densely minimal arrangements of one-note
guitars and drums that thud the side of your skull,
but it is mostly attributable to the entire
frostiness of the sound world. The gentle arpeggios
of 'St. Neil' are indicative of a veiled melodic
sensibility reminiscent of, oddly enough,
semi-namesakes Low. The gorgeous bottlenecked
guitar and cannily crafted strings in the
background lend some lamenting lyricism to the
darkly languorous audio-dramatics we are privy to.

With that monumentally pretty song being followed
by another similarly colourful and swelling jewel
of a slow burn, 'Wolves Eat Dogs', one could easily
mistake The Low Lows as the diseased,
Morricone-influenced baby brothers of Low. But this
would be to miss the point entirely. Where the
Sparhawks have the pleading stance of wronged
innocents, P.L. Noon from The Low Lows knows
exactly what is wrong. He just can't do anything
about it. "I never should have left the woods, I
should have known I never could have not hurt you?"
he pitifully cries. It is Noon's voice that carries
a large portion of 'Fire On The Bright Sky', such
is the relative restraint of the arrangements below
him. And it is this restraint that allows the
barely-intelligible word to become unerringly
prevalent. When he wails about 'poor Georgia girls'
it is difficult to know what he means, but
thunderously easy to know that he means it.

As 'Fire On The Bright Sky' relaxes around you, its
luxuriant atmosphere caressing the surrounding air,
it becomes utterly obvious that this is the work of
people who are well-versed in delicate
constructions and who know the value of waiting
before giving a musical pay-off. The stop-start
slapdash of '(No Such Thing As) Sarah Jane' is
expertly paced with an ending so impeccably woven
through with viscous horns and strings that
satisfaction is not so much guaranteed as
gospel-intoned. The pacing of the record as a whole
is guilty of a monumental slow-down, but this does
nothing to stifle the enjoyment. If anything, it is
a record that needs to slow down anyway. It isn't
hard to get comfortable with the gradual downward
spiral that reaches its lowest ebb on the final
spoken-word and organ bluster of 'The Russian
Ending'. The beauty is never not entirely at the
forefront, with the dark ramblings of 'Little by
little we never met again' providing the necessary
gravity to this most mournful of records.