Who needs Japanese editions when bonus tracks end up surfacing on singles anyhow, right? In an interview this year, Alan Sparhawk described one of their more cheery, poppier sounding tunes, "Canada," as being all about death, materialism and Heaven. "You can't take that stuff to Canada" is the repeated line in the song, and Canada is up north for most people in the USA,...
Maybe it makes more sense to him, but it's still an enjoyable tune with a catchy hook and very loud guitars. An alternative version of Low's album closer, "Shots and Ladders" rounds out the single. This version starts off intimately, with the vocals very close and personal and the music completely void of the lengthy reverberations which characterize the album version. However, Low's further adventures of trying to be noise artists just makes me shiver. The spooky keyboard sample is so grotesquely out of place that my face squints as I try to bear the whole tune. Numerous multi-tracked acoustic guitars grace their version of Pink Floyd's "Fearless," which, surprisingly for Low stays quite true to the original, adding only the female vocals of Mim and leaving out the Rogers and Hammerstein chant at the end. This is probably the best reason to buy this single and it isn't even on the 7" version!
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