Press and Radio

Artist Low
Title Drums And Guns
Label Sub Pop
By Andy Gill
Published: 22 February 2007

"All the soldiers are gonna die/All the little babies are gonna die," runs the opening gambit of "Pretty People", the lead-off track to Low's eighth album. From the streams running "bright rosy red" in " Always Fade" to the terrorist seeking divine justification in " Murderer", Drums And Guns is stained with guilty contempt for mankind's violent urges. Even a proposed rapprochement is couched in volatile terms in "Hatchet"; "You be my Marianne, and I'll be your Yoko - let's bury the hatchet like The Beatles and the Stones". Low have never been the most propulsive of rock bands, and despite the more keyboard-oriented arrangements preferred here, their facility with funereal tempos and sepulchral timbres is used to good advantage, allowing the songs to build gradually to a pitch of pious horror.

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