On the Precipice: Low’s The Great Destroyer 20th anniversary

With Inauguration Day taking place earlier this week, it could be considered that Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker exhibited a great degree of prescience 20 years ago when naming Low’s seventh studio album, The Great Destroyer.

’90s-era Low were never cast as an overt political act, per se, but The Great Destroyer saw the pair – this time alongside bassist Zak Sally – clearing the rubble from the road that led to despair.

Open to interpretation, the title could have been construed as a reference to the United States’ invasion of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan as much as it could have been a response to climate change. Sally’s artwork within the inner-sleeve, perhaps pointing to the latter, where the three band members are stood, clothed, slightly bloodied and testing the waters. (Further evidenced with the title of the closing track.)

Whichever way one interprets it, the political lens would come into sharper focus during Low’s later years – The Great Destroyer’s follow-up in Drums & Guns (2007), to the era-defining Double Negative (2018) and their final album, HEY WHAT (2021), moments where Low displayed their discontent through a barrage noise both scrambled and scarred.

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Since Mimi Parker’s death in 2022 to ovarian cancer at the young of 55, Low have been the toughest act to navigate. It’s hard to choose favourite bands, and while it may be a moot point to most, it’s hard to argue against Low being mine. With the welcomed return of Sparhawk and his 2024 solo release, White Roses, My God, Low’s artistic endeavours have left indelible marks – their music a vital crutch through my own circle of hell, having also lost a spouse.

During these precarious times, perhaps there’s no better way to re-engage with something than to celebrate one of its milestones, and in the case of The Great Destroyer, there are few others like it in the Low oeuvre.

The band’s first album for Sub Pop, The Great Destroyer was arguably the first major reform of the Low sound template – a facet that would continue with each of their albums thereafter. With many of these songs featuring heavily in the band’s live show for the years and decades to come, it underlines just how important The Great Destroyer was within the their canon.

So, how did Low orchestrate this triumph? Inspired by the sharper edges of The Great Destroyer’s predecessor, the under-appreciated Trust (2002), Low went beyond the borders, moving away from the traditional slowcore aesthetic in favour of something more open-sourced and dynamic.

At just under 53 minutes, the 13 tracks that comprise of The Great Destroyer saw Low galvanising lightning bolts. And with the help of Dave Fridmann, the Mercury Rev co-founder and key figure hovering over the soundboards in the ’00s (he also featured on keyboards throughout), the result is a record that sounds like it was made yesterday.

It wouldn’t be the only release Fridmann was a part of in the January of 2005, also providing the sonic angel dust to Mercury Rev’s criminally underrated The Secret Migration, which landed just a day before The Great Destroyer.

Metallic and harsh, The Great Destroyer begins with Monkey. Low don’t make it comfortable, as laser beam synths shoot from the speakers and bore into the mind. With Sparhawk and Parker sharing one of their stirring, trademark choruses (“Tonight you will be mine / Tonight the monkey dies”), it’s all held together by Sally’s droning, undergirded bass line. Journalist, Denise Sullivan, once described Low “as chilling as anything Gram [Parsons] and Emmylou [Harris] ever conspired on …. straight from the heart”. In the case of Monkey, not a truer word has been spoken of the band.

Bathed in the locality of its namesake, California – a song Sparhawk wrote about his mother – is arguably Low’s most famed and revered song. Effortless songwriting with gallop and drive, ultimately it’s the song Neil Young has never written. Meanwhile, Everybody’s Song moves from idyllic climes to conflict (“Breaking everybody’s heart / Taking everyone a part”), and matched with Parker’s ear-splitting percussion and Sparhawk’s screeching guitars, it’s one of The Great Destroyer’s most turbulent points.

Something that Silver Rider is not. An exercise in catharsis, it’s one of Low’s most beautiful moments as a band. As each note glitters like crystal, the song’s emotional intensity overrides everything in your orbit. With melodies and harmonies that, indeed, pass “through you like a knife”, so emphatic, the ensuing years would see Robert Plant cover the song (along with Monkey).

On Just Stand Back, Low took slowcore to the upper reaches. Majestic and ethereal, it’s one of the moments on The Great Destroyer where the band looked to the past to move forward in the present. Harnessed by Fridmann’s mastery from behind the studio glass, the result, nothing but boundless prestige.

While Silver Rider may be The Great Destroyer’s shining beacon, Cue the Strings runs it close. A haunting lullaby radiating with unique vividness, with a line like “So what, pray tell / Will save you now / Here comes the cold sunrise”, it’s that profound snapshot indicative of all high watermarks. That moment where the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

There are so many of these lyrical vignettes throughout The Great Destroyer, and Step contains another. As Sparhawk sings, “Hey, keep an eye on what you say / You think words just walk away”, it confirmed Low as true songwriting marvels. Almost from the scrapbook of the Go-Betweens’ Robert Forster and Grant McLennan, throughout a career where Low’s lyrics were arguably overshadowed by their sonic aesthetic, The Great Destroyer proved otherwise.

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And if people weren’t sure about this, then When I Go Deaf removed all doubt. Occupying the same stratosphere as Silver Rider and Cue the Strings, this is rambling, electric folk underlining the kind of abandon that goes beyond the ominous realities this world has to offer. The song, perhaps more relevant now than it was 20 years ago.

Broadway (So Many People) has its own new layers of majesty. Out of all the songs on The Great Destroyer, this is the one continues to grow stronger with age, and if it doesn’t bring a tear to the eye, then consider yourself hollow inside. A mini epic that burns into the soul, Sparhawk leads with a street-level tale, and backed by Sally’s bass chug and Parker’s tender harmonies, it’s quintessential Low.

Then there’s the black swarm of disturbing possibilities in Pissing. The sunken gloom of Monkey with new cold undercurrents, it doesn’t last long – the atmosphere thawed by campfire flames, and through them is Death of a Salesman. Skeletal simplicity that Sparhawk has sporadically showcased through Low and later with the Retribution Gospel Choir, it leads into closing song, Walk Into the Sea. A motorik jam that feels like the last vestige of indie-rock as we once knew it to be.

Even during these times of immense uncertainty, where everything feels like it’s on the precipice, the best art triggers positive emotional response. An album that imbues hope, and while it feels as far away as ever, with The Great Destroyer Low open a door that leads to new possibilities. Time will never change that.

There are many jewels in the Low crown, but perhaps none as valuable as The Great Destroyer. How many Low albums could be considered a ‘Best of’ without being just that? The Great Destroyer is that record. With so many vivid snapshots, with so many songs attached to memories throughout life, essentially providing a soundtrack to it, it’s the reason why The Great Destroyer is, in my opinion, Low’s magnum opus. An untainted, distinguished masterpiece. And 20 years on, that hasn’t changed.