Low - Trust

Low spent the 1990s making some of the quietest music in American rock, and by 2002 they had earned the right to get heavy about it. Trust, their sixth studio album, is the one that goes furthest into the dark. It arrived in October of that year sounding like a record made by people who had been paying very close attention to the preceding twelve months, and it remains the most oppressive thing in the catalog, in mood if not always in volume.

It opens with a seven-minute "(That's How You Sing) Amazing Grace" and never lightens up. "Canada" grinds harder than anything the band had put to tape before it, "The Lamb" builds on a room full of friends stomping a floor, "John Prine" stretches past seven minutes, and "Shots & Ladders" closes somewhere near resignation. Thirteen tracks across four sides, recorded at Sacred Heart in Duluth and Third Ear in Minneapolis by Tom Herbers, and mixed by Tchad Blake, whose work with Latin Playboys and Lisa Germano made him an unusually good match for a band this invested in room sound and unease. Gerry Beckley of America sings on "It's In The Drugs" and "La La La Song," with Marc Gartman adding banjo to the former.

Alan Sparhawk, Mimi Parker and Zak Sally had been a trio for the better part of a decade by this point, and Trust is where their famous patience curdles into something closer to dread. It was received on release as the most assertive and expansive thing they had made, and two decades later it stands as one of the essential records of their Kranky run.

Back in print as a gatefold double LP, mastered and cut by John Golden. Kranky, KRANK052.