Iceage’s buddies Lower make intense music. Seek Warmer Climes, the Copenhagen quartet’s debut album, sparkles with the harmonic dissonance and high-strung urgency of their underground rock forebears.
But Lower also channel the romance and drama of great singer-songwriters, from late-period Scott Walker to Bryan Ferry. The result is a hugely ambitious and affecting rock album that enters deeply personal and unusual sonic and topical spaces.
httpv://https://youtu.be/cU_BO9x9rvI
Certainly, you don’t have to dig deep to hear how far Lower’s music sits from the traditional concerns of modern rock music. Toubro’s lyrics are finely wrought emotional dramas that, in their poetic construction and raw honesty of delivery, gesture to the music of Walker or Leonard Cohen.
As inspirations he cites Cornelis Vreeswijk, the half Dutch, half Swedish troubadour whose coarse language and fascination with low society shocked the conservative listeners of the day, and filmmaker John Cassavetes, who made his movies about “real people with real issues”.
“Lower is who we are and what we do. Though making a living and getting by require us to engage elsewhere, this is what we identify ourselves as – an outlet for whatever you might experience through logistic and practical engagements: joy, aggression, defeat and success.
The ambition is to express the internal and external influences that make a human, to the truest degree possible. This being our truth, one ambition as well is to function as a group – being able to help, listen, live and work together, to take something away from being Lower. Something that is real and relates to the hard-knit relations that make up life. It is also very important to constantly expand and evolve.”
Support: UV GLAZE, Berlin’s nihilistic answer to Flipper, Jesus Lizard and Black Flag.
Lower & UV Glaze LIVE
Thursday, 12th June 2014 | 21:00 CET
Monarch | Skalitzer Str. 134 | 10999 Berlin/Kreuzberg
lowercopenhagen.net | matadorrecords.com | kottimonarch.de
