Low ratings

It being the last day of 2021, when better to be posting about my favourite album of the year? (Low's HEY WHAT, perhaps best described by LoneLady - herself the creator of one of the year's most lauded LPs, Former Things - as "like being torn apart by euphoric poltergeists in static").

Experience has taught me to pay heed to anything that Low do or say - seriously, Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker singing the phone directory (if such things still existed) would have me spellbound - so when Loud And Quiet invited them to recommend six underappreciated musical acts, I was all ears.

Their picks include The Danielson Family, Shannon Wright and Lord Friday The 13th (who will be familiar to anyone who's watched Alan's Vansplaining). Inevitably, though, the article is most fascinating when talk turns to Low themselves: the dynamics of making music and touring as a couple; the creative process behind HEY WHAT ("I'd written all this stuff on guitar, but I don't want to hear the guitar anymore. So the question became how do I turn it into something that doesn't sound like a guitar, and a lot of what's going on is just that"); the joy of discovering that Yo La Tengo aren't "snooty New York record-collector people", as Alan had long suspected, but actually "super nice". Here's hoping they're now hanging out together - and that maybe, just maybe, there might be a collaboration someday.