This week, I wanted to highlight the newest single from classic indie group Low. “More” is a track that is simultaneously insane and simplistic. The song is pretty short, and has a simple arrangement of vocals with an overwhelmingly noisy accompaniment of what sounds like a guitar distorted beyond recognition.
The first thing that jumps out at me about this song is its texture. While the sound of the instrumental is abrasive, even bordering on noise, it is also intricate and perfectly mixed. Its sound is so tactile that it almost feels like a massage for my ears. This is definitely a “love it or hate it” type of sound, but I’ve always really appreciated artists who are capable of taming and molding noise into gorgeous sculptures of sound, and “More” definitely fits into this category.
There isn’t much to the lyrics, but there is a lot of meaning if you read between the lines. In the first verse, the protagonist is expressing a sense of loss–“I gave more than what I should have lost. I paid more than what it should have cost.” This is something elaborated on in the second verse, where they augment the idea with a sense of being cheated, and finally, regret–“I should have asked for more than what I got.“
I’ve never been into Low very much, but these new singles have piqued my interest for their upcoming record, Hey What, which comes out next month.
Amped! 