Low - Secret Name

Secret Name is the hinge in Low's catalog. Their fourth album, released in spring 1999, it was the first they made for Kranky and the first they made with Steve Albini, who recorded it at Electrical Audio in Chicago. Both changes stuck. Albini would engineer the follow-up, and Kranky became the band's home through the run of records that made their reputation.

The music opens outward here without ever speeding up. "I Remember," "Two-Step," "Weight Of Water" and "Immune" still move at a glacial pace, but strings, piano and timpani widen the frame, and Zak Sally's Optigan lays a warped, wobbling haze across several tracks. Albini's room-mic approach is the real story. It leaves Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker's harmonies almost uncomfortably exposed, close enough that the silence around them becomes part of the arrangement.

The title comes from a line in "Weight Of Water," where the lyric describes making a river through the sand until you are called by a secret name, which is about as good a summary of the record's patience as anyone is likely to write. Reviewers at the time noted that Low had found a way to expand without surrendering the stillness that made them distinctive in the first place, and that balance is why this is so often cited as the moment the band became essential.

This 2LP edition is all-analog processed on 150 gram vinyl in a gatefold jacket, mastered and cut by John Golden, and includes two tracks that never appeared on the CD, "Old Man Song" and "Last Breath." Kranky, KRANK035.