While Low are still known best for their basic three instrument arrangements, they have continuously been pushing their studio recordings to places beyond the signature sound and fan expectation. With Drums and Guns, they may have gone a bit too far. As much as I love Low and consider them one of the best rock music songwriting entities ever, no matter how much I listen to this album, I can't connect with it as a whole as much as I want to.
Hard core fans will recognize this sound: it's the sound of their B-side alternate takes. Going back through their catalog and listening to songs like the version of "Be There" from the "Over the Ocean" single, "I Remember" found on the B-side of "Immune," or "Shots and Ladders" from the "Canada" single, Low are known to have their more standard basic guitar strumming rock version and the more daring alternate take. On Drums and Guns, there is next to zero standard guitar chord strumming anywhere; the sound of Alan's guitar, when present, consists more of single-note playing and droning sustains while the rest of the instrumentation is dominated by sequencers, live percussion and drum machines, and samples. It's a move which eerily parallels Radiohead's Kid A, which means I'm sure it will gain them a ton of respect but it also has the potential to alienate a number of fans.
A number of the songs should be familiar to many, as they have been performed live for a few years and, in the case of "Murderer," have had recordings surface even before 2005's The Great Destroyer. Songs that were some of my favorite "new" live songs like "Dragonfly" and "Murderer" have become some of my fave songs on record. Although the music might make them sound distant: more robotic and less human, the lyrics still have the power to make clean cuts into the soul. The album is easily Low's most gruesome, as the title even suggests (throughout history soldiers and fighters march with drums and guns, after all) opening with the song "Pretty People" and its belting cry about how all the soldiers, little babies, poets, liars, and pretty people are "all going to die," picking up a couple songs later with "Breaker" as Alan sings how the "blood spills and spills" and "my hand just kills and kills." "Sandinista" is another example, sounding like a battle march with the multi-layered drumming and the lyrics to match "deep through the clouds, hear them marching up slowly fresh with the blood of your father so holy."
I can't help but think that some of the songs are fluff, however. "Your Poison" has potential with its opening vocal harmonies but at under 90 seconds it doesn't have the chance to develop. "Belarus" sounds pretty with its tinkling synthetic rhythms and Alan/Mimi harmony but it's relatively forgettable and while "Hatchet" may have a suggestive title, it's about burying "the hatchet like the Beatles and the Stones." It's a song I never was terribly fond of live and it's certainly not one of the best ones here.
"Murderer," while quite different from the original version on the Vinyl Films 10" single, still remains fairly powerful, but with a song that challenges god's evil and the cruelty of our own humanity, it's hard to be less than intense. I still think the earlier version was less alienating but with Low I'm sure there's a conscious reason behind this alienating sound on Drums and Guns. "Violent Past" closes the album with a typical rock progression, executed, however, through sampled organs and other weirdness, and while the lyrics continue with the fight theme of the rest of the album. Here we're finally given an attempt at an explanation, "maybe it's your violent past / maybe it's the violent path," Low's own interpretation of the old nature versus nurture argument but it's a compromise between the two. The message I'm getting from the album by this end is that underneath all the conflict, compromises are possible, I don't disagree with them but I'm simply not as captivated as I want to be.
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