Drums and Guns

Mar

29

Drums and Guns

Low just published their last album. It is titled Drums and Guns. And as you would expect from this band, Low again delivers music that is dark slow and gloomy. And the message that the album tries to get across right from the bat with the opening song Pretty People, can’t be misunderstood.

All the soldiers
They’re all gonna die
All the little babies
They’re all gonna die

You could say that Drums and Guns is an anti war album, but it is not an political album. If you are looking for a new fix of rants against GWB’s policies, you will have to look elsewhere. This album is (at least to me) a collection of laments about the always failing human spirit. It portrays the kind of sorrow that you could feel while overseeing the battlefield after the battle. Anger or any sense of moral superiority, two common ingredients in anti war songs, don’t mean much all of a sudden .

It would be all too much if the band didn’t lighten up a bit halfway the album. In Hatchet they even propose a simple solution that could end all this misery.

You be my Charlie
And I can be your George
Let’s bury the hatchet like the Beatles and the Stones

But the sad thing is that we never seem able to bury the hatchet deep enough. The damn thing alway pops up again sooner or later, and we find ourselves again in another era of death and mayhem like described in the song Breaker.

our bodies break
and the blood just spills and spills
but here we sit debating math

It’s just a shame
my hand just kills and kills
there’s got to be an end to that

This is one of the best songs of the album. It can be downloaded here.

And if you don’t mind, i’m going to put my headphones on and give this masterpiece another spin.