Featured Essay: Low's "Great Destroyer"

by Cameron Norbert

After fifty-three minutes of betrayal, destruction, tension, and release, The Great Destroyer stands revealed. All are powerless against it, but as long as we face it together, there is hope.

Twenty years on, Low’s The Great Destroyer stands as a high-watermark in an truly impressive discography, but when it arrived in the early days of 2005, the reactions were mixed. People weren’t sure of this new loud Low, and there were those who felt it was the band abandoning their winning formula. Pitchfork even brutally gave it 5.5.

Back in 2005, Low was a trio consisting of the married partners of Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker, along with bassist Zak Sally. Previously known for minimalism and restraint, The Great Destroyer showed how Low could go big without undoing the band’s slowcore concept. The album was both the culmination of their trajectory as a trio as well as an obliteration of all previously set constraints. Time, however, is a funny thing. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that Low’s formula was always one of evolution, and The Great Destroyer is ripe for rediscovery as an essential stop on that transformative journey.

All of Low’s discography shines on vinyl, but The Great Destroyer has always been the record I spin the most. It’s a record that consumes you. Low excel at building atmosphere. Their recordings often evoke a sense of space, usually with a tense intimacy; but where past albums flirted with bigger sounds, the feeling created on The Great Destroyer is immense. Like the ominous clouds painted on the album’s cover perfectly allude to, it barrels out of your speakers like rolling thunder, filling every corner with jagged guitars and delicate harmonies, as Low’s minimalist tendencies have now been amplified in the hands of maximalist producer Dave Fridmann.

Known for his work at the time with The Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev, Fridmann brings a rich understanding of how to exploit the studio to a band’s advantage.Fridmann was a bit of a musical darling in the early part of the 2000s, thanks to a Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots inspired renaissance the Flaming Lips were enjoying. Several bands looked to him in 2005 to give their production a shot in the arm. In addition to The Great Destroyer Fridmann would also helm Sleater-Kinney’s blown-out masterpiece The Woods later in the year.

On paper, his partnership with Low might seem like an odd fit, but when you understand the producer’s true superpower, you unlock the magic of The Great Destroyer. What Fridmann excels at is accentuating a band’s essence by turning the dials to fully capitalize on their existing strengths. For Low, Fridmann kept their angelic harmonies, but took their instrumentation - Parker and Sally’s low-end and Sparhawk’s guitar - and fuzzed them out to create a wall of sound.

How the vocals pair with the enormity of the instrumentation is part of the magic of The Great Destroyer. Where other producers played into the minimalism, Fridmann challenged the vocals to push through the reverb and sonic textures, as if they were doing battle. This makes for thrilling tension and in turn, it makes softer moments sweeter by contrast. “When I Go Deaf” is a perfect example of this. It starts as a delicate acoustic song, only to erupt into the album’s most chaotic moment of guitar squall, with the chorus barely audible through the chaos.

The percussive nature of The Great Destroyer belies the fact that this is Low’s most guitar-centric album to date. Every song is so rich that it takes you a moment to realize how much is coming from Sparhawk’s guitar, from the chug of “Just Stand Back” to the fried simmer of “On The Edge Of,” it does a lot of the heavy lifting with Fridmann knowing how to push it forward into the mix, and when to pull it back.

The album opens in harrowing fashion with “Monkey.” It’s a warning, with a sound that is claustrophobic and unrelenting. “Monkey” works so well at setting a mood that it makes “California,” the record’s second track, sound bright and open in comparison. It’s a nifty sleight-of-hand that amplifies the cinematic feel of “California.”

While “Everybody’s Song” dives back into the oppressive unease of “Monkey,” it gives way to one of the album’s most beautiful tracks, “Silver Rider.” Here, there is mention of The Great Destroyer, but the song is coy with its meaning, as the vocals become weightless with its La-La chorus, washed in sound as they warn “sometimes your voice is not enough.”

“Just Stand Back” is one the poppiest songs in Low’s catalogue. It gets your toe tapping even as the lyrics caution you not to get too comfortable. It, along with “Broadway (So Many People),” are two of the brightest spots on the album, and they complement the anxious numbers like “Pissing” and “Step” by offering a tuneful respite.

The record concludes with two songs that feel deliberately connected. “Death of a Salesman” is a lament that music is not the way to succeed in life, and the future is “prisons and math.” This quiet number perfectly positions the album closer, “Walk into The Sea,” which serves as a rousing benediction for all that has come before it. It is here where we face The Great Destroyer itself: Time. It gets the better of us all, in the end. As the needle stops, and you reflect on The Great Destroyer, you realize that it’s a marvel of optimism in face of unbeatable odds. Humanity championing creation despite the inevitability of destruction.

Ultimately, the weight of The Great Destroyer would leave the band forever changed. Time had taken its toll, and The Great Destroyer would be the last record with Zak Sally. In the wake of The Great Destroyer, Low would return with 2007’s Drums and Guns, which is an album as far from Destroyer’s roar as humanly possible, even with Fridmann back in the producer’s chair. It’s a challenging record, one that felt almost alien to me on first listen. Gone are the guitars, in favor of more electronic sounds. In a 2018 interview with Vice, while promoting Double Negative, Alan Sparhawk ranked Drums and Guns as his favorite Low album, stating “It was the first time we really took some chances.” It is indeed a risky album, but also one that couldn’t exist without “The Great Destroyer” preceding it. Understanding Low’s journey now helps me appreciate a record like Drums and Guns more. Again, through time’s backward lens, we can see how the risks taken on both records converge on 2018’s Double Negative and again to even better effect on 2021’s Hey What. Both of these records take the glitchy unease of Drums and Guns and marry them with the maximalist sound of The Great Destroyer. They are a testament to a band that never stopped pushing into new territory. They would ultimately be the last albums made by Low, as Mimi Parker passed away in 2022 after a long battle with ovarian cancer.

Low leave behind a stellar catalogue, all perfect to give your time to on a rainy day. But no other record makes intimate confession thunder like The Great Destroyer. It reminds you that the clock is ticking, so take big swings with love at your side, because sometimes a voice is not enough.

Cameron Norbert is originally from Philadelphia, but currently lives in Atlanta. He is a cartoonist who spends his days working in Learning & Development, and he is never without his headphones. Currently he loves building out his record collection by hunting down hard to find indie, blues, funk, prog, & Cajun records. Additionally, he’s finding a ton of fantastic new European sounds through his wife’s writing about Eurovision.

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