You can get off to a fast start. You can sustain your opener with the main course, not filler. But can you end on a high note? Sometimes I wonder if recording a strong closer is the most difficult thing to pull off when it comes to album rock. When it comes to the cream of the crop in music, I can think of more strong openers than strong closers. Nonetheless, I still have my favorites which I’ll be featuring on Mental Jukebox all month.
The harmonies of Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker are some of the most beautifully haunting elements of music ever uttered. When Mimi passed away from cancer late last year, the music world lost a great human being but also one half of the greatness that is Low. Even if Alan continues on, Low will never be the same again, which saddens me. As their last studio album release prior to Mimi’s death, HEY WHAT builds on the distorted, experimental sound of their more recent recordings. The album ends in epic fashion with the seven-minute anthem “The Price You Pay”.
The track contains large swaths of distortion where no lyrics are sung, where Alan and Mimi are locked in instrumentally. The engineering work of BJ Burton emphatically takes this track – along with all the album’s songs – to the next level. It even earned him a Grammy nomination. But the most powerful element of “The Price You Pay” is and always will be the bone-chilling vocal harmonies where Alan and Mimi sing together in their final studio recording. It feels so final and infinite at the same time.
“I put a lot of thought Into the price you pay To hear the morning come. Keep the ghost another day.”