Low

Things We Lost In The Fire
Kranky, 2001

During the early 1990s, as grunge was building upon the aesthetics of punk and metal, another group of underground bands quietly took their art in the opposite direction. Finding inspiration in the dark, minimalist sounds of Joy Division, they encountered a single problem: the songs were too fast. A decade after Ian Curtis’s death, Galaxie 500 would release a cover of 'Ceremony' (originally performed by Joy Division, later to emerge as New Order’s first single), Bedhead a cover of 'Disorder', Low, 'Transmission' and Codeine, 'Atmosphere' – all of them played at half the speed of the originals. And even though this string of languid tributes would span six years in total, outliving half of the bands involved, it’s easy to imagine them as the single defining moment of slow-core.

Marked by skeletal music and the speed of its name, slow-core harnessed the drone of art-rock and shoegazing but allowed it to lap at the feet of fragile guitar melodies rather than coercing it into waves of noise. By the time Low formed in 1994, Galaxie 500 no longer existed and Codeine were to separate only a few months later. Bedhead went on releasing their beautifully simple guitar melodies until splitting in 1998, two years after Low had begun to receive attention for their low-key classic The Curtain Hits the Cast – which included a brilliant 15-minute ambient track called 'Do You Know How To Waltz?'

By the time Low released Things We Lost In The Fire in 2001, they had become the last surviving slow-core band. The album began with a track called 'Sunflower' that had a sweet melody and surreal lyrics: "When they found your body/ Giant Xs on your eyes/ With your half of the ransom/ You bought some sweet sunflowers/ And gave them to the night." It's the calm before the storm – second track 'Whitetail' is darker than most would enjoy – and one of the finest mixtures of sweetness and sorrow ever to grace my ears.