On Low's "Days Like These"

A song I love

When you think you’ve seen everything
You’ll find we’re living in days like these
They say you only take what you bring
Maybe that’s just the way they speak

Alan Sparhawk’s naked vocal comes flying at you like a right hook. It’s furious, it’s in pain, and it’s right in your face. But there’s a deeper frustration in him, something cosmic. You realize it’s not you, it’s not personal. This is the anger of punching a hole in the wall. A futile gesture of pure fury that is also an act of prayer. He would beat the shit out of the problem if that was possible. But it isn’t. It never is.

The vocal is so clear it feels unnatural. And it is unnatural. If Sparhawl was screaming this in your face it wouldn’t be so pure. You would hear a fan in the background, the heater growling, a refrigerator hum. There’s no air in this vocal, no dust to it. That’s the first digital element you notice. It’s too clean to be anything you would hear in real life. It’s an impossible vocal, completely isolated, the whole world scraped away.

Mimi Parker comes in for the second half of the line. She’s accompanied by a slightly distorted synth, the second digital element. Her voice is mixed lower than his, and that’s because this song is about Sparhawk’s anger, his frustration. It feels like an act of grace to give him a moment to scream into the big nothing. There’s a power here, an understanding. This is the kind of thing you get when you’ve been a married couple singing together for more than thirty years. It’s the deepest intimacy imaginable.

Know that I would do anything
Is it something that I can’t see?
Everybody just chased by dreams
That’s why we’re living in days like these again

Hanging over the song is the coming death of Mimi Parker only one year later from cancer. Sparhawk first met Mimi in fourth grade, and they started dating the summer after high school. They were a couple for forty years, and Low was their band. Mimi had such a beautiful voice, elegant but never showy, unpretentious. She sang to you like a friend, with an easy intimacy, but one that cut right to the heart. It never felt like you knew her, but that she somehow knew you, and could see clear into your core. I can only think of a handful of singers that can do that. It’s a rare gift.

The guitar break, the same simple progression again. Sounds like a Telecaster to me, but what do I know. And when Sparhawk comes back in it’s with a renewed fury. And Mimi’s voice is clean, but it’s almost overwhelmed by a kind of digital swamp. It feels like the machines themselves are screaming back at Sparhawk, like the whole digital universe is as pissed as he is. At the state of the world, at his wife’s sickness, at God, at himself. It’s fucking brutal. It’ll also break your heart.

It isn’t something you can choose between
It isn’t coming in twos and threes
Always looking for that one sure thing
Oh, you wanted so desperately

“Days Like These” is one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard. It passes the perfect song test, which is, “Would this sound good if the Ramones covered it?” Which is the same as, “Would this sound good if kids were singing it on a playground?” Which is the same as, “Would this sound good if you were humming it while doing dishes?” You know what a mean. This is a melody test. And “Days Like These” passes. Boy does it.

It’s also a miracle of production, proof that a thirty-year-old band can still take a turn on you. What I most admire about Low is how they always changed from record to record. Some changes I liked more than others, but there were no ends to what they could do to their sound. At the same time, they always sounded like no one but themselves. The same ache permeates “In Metal” and “Nothing But Heart” and “Dancing and Blood.” (Also, that pain is what makes the little slice of bliss “Just Like Christmas” from their Christmas EP an absolute blast.) “Days Like These” is its apotheosis, a song of beauty and pain and hope and anger and desperation, sung beautifully, harmonies otherworldly, guitars sparkling, a shriek of noise. The slow fadeout you never want to end. A band at its absolute peak, on what would be their final album.

No, you’re never gonna feel complete
No, you’re never gonna be released
Maybe never even see, believe
That’s why we’re living in days like these again

The song fades away in a kind of icy keyboard waves, with Mimi louder now, singing only the word “again.” It feels resigned, fated. But not gone yet. The song refuses to end. It lingers for almost five minutes, floating in this strange in between place, a kind of threshold. A waiting room.

Mimi’s death was the end of Low. Sparhawk made a solo record last year. The album’s great, but it isn’t this. It couldn’t be.

It also doesn’t have to be. We’ve already been given enough. The beauty of being in a band for thirty years that never made a bad record. You could pore over this discography for the rest of your life. You’d be wise to. Decades of work, two lives so beautifully intertwined, a career in miracles.