Low thought some long-time fans, dedicated to the signature echo-wrapped, slow and stark sound they've developed over the past 12 years, might be skeptical of the surprisingly louder sound of their latest album, The Great Destroyer.
But their own mothers?
"I asked my mom if she liked the new record," said Low bassist Zak Sally, "and she said, 'Oh, I like your quieter stuff more.' "
Sally, who forms the Duluth, Minn. trio along with married band members vocalist Alan Sparhawk and percussionist Mimi Parker, said the band always hopes fans will follow them down different avenues of experimentation, but giving listeners a strangely different album with a new sound wasn't necessarily done on purpose.
"In the very beginning we were very focused on doing this one thing," Sally said of the creeping, deliberate sound of their previous six albums. "We've sort of expanded from there in a really natural way."
Sally said not only did their latest album's more forceful sound slowly evolve on recent albums, but that it also grew out of the band's own unknown creative territory.
"There was a point when this record was going to be acoustic and in the end we decided that we wanted to be really direct and really focused with it, and that meant we had to go over the line instead of not going far enough with some of the songs."
In that sense, Low has always been about going over the line by breaking their own rules and challenging their own concepts and their audience.
Sally said when Low first started, the band was more interested in simply finding out how much a song could be stripped down to a bare, minimal form or played as slowly as possible.
"At first it was done just to see what happened, because we thought it would be kind of funny and amazing to play music very intensely," Sally said. "But then we realized it wasn't funny, it was very powerful. That also, though, created it's kind of self-imposed boundaries, and that's kind of where we are now, to sort of push against those boundaries."
From the shining, cheerful acoustic hook of "California" and the more poppy "Just Stand Back," to the blast of jarring, gritty guitar on "When I Go Deaf," Low has made an album that breaks down the etched out, consistent style of their previous work. The album, though, is not unrecognizable, with songs like "The Silver Rider," which is heavy with the signature wispy, ethereal harmonies of Sparhawk and Parker.
"There are times on this album when we do sound very different," Sally said. "But I don't think there's ever any question that it's Low. It's not like we've found this sort of rock tangent and that's our new direction."
Sally said though Low never set out to specifically make The Great Destroyer a rock album, its different sound doesn't discount or change the meanings of their past albums.
"It just depends on what's going on in our lives at that time," Sally said. "I think this album might be the most honest about that for us, that a record is just a moment in time."
Low will perform a 21+ show this Saturday night with Loveland at Hotel Congress, 311 E. Congress St. Doors open at 9, and tickets are $8 in advance and $10 the day of the show.