On November 6th about 4 pm, I received a call from a girl I'd met on the Low mailing list. She goes to school near Nashville (where I live). I'd never met her face to face before, but she asked me: "Would you be up for a trip to Louisville (Kentucky)?" Low was playing in Louisville that night. I had wanted to go (of course), but had basically talked myself out of it. It was in the middle of the week and I had no one to go with. Then "princess confusion" called and I was fished in. Within the hour I had requested to leave work early, ran home, changed and hit the road. It's about a three hour drive from Nashville to Louisville. What neither of us realized however is that Louisville is in the Eastern time zone...which put us another hour ahead (running late). Sometimes I hate living near the time zone border. We arrived in Louisville, but we had no idea how to get the show. The show was in a place called The Church of St. Philip Nery. We pulled over to a convenience mart to ask for directions. A nice lady who was there started to write down directions and then said: "I tell you what, why dont you just follow me there?" She led us straight to the church. We walked inside and the opening band had already begun to play. They were called Ida and they were incredible. We were both in such a heightened emotional state that we nearly burst into tears on the spot.The church was beautiful! Pews, kneeling benches, tall vaulted ceilings, old lighting fixtures, and an enormous tapestry on the front wall. The lighting was very...low (no pun intended) and the size of the room gave everything a wonderful reverb/ambience. Low played a few of their new songs, my favorite of which I think is called Landlord.

"Lets keep the landlord in mind
as the microphones pick up...
their soft words"

As usual it's a very slow song, but what makes it unique is its incredible intensity. The way I would describe it would be an angry funeral march. There really does seem to be a lot of anger within that song. It's not something you see often within Low's music. They also played Do You Know How To Waltz which I'd never heard them perform live before. It's about a two minute song dropped in the middle of thirteen minutes of ambient noise. By the end of the song the feedback and delays were deafening. The thing I like about ambient music is that it starts to take on a life of its own. You can hear things, patterns emerge from the noise. As soon as the show was over we got in the car and drove back to Nashville. I went to sleep at about 2:30 am. The next day, I was dead to the world...but happy.

It was a short, but wonderful show. Infinitely quieter than their St. Louis shows (obviously not a bar setting). The only down side to the evening was the "middle" act; a grizzled old blues man who played the same damn riff for about 40 minutes. It was very...awkward.

"It's nice to be playing in a place where so many concerned people have been."
--Alan referring to the church

Chris Phillips
rein020b@yahoo.com

« back to the show reviews
« back to the 1997 tour dates