Hey What

''Hey What'' (stylized in all uppercase) is the thirteenth and final studio album by Minnesota-based duo Low, released on September 10, 2021, through Sub Pop. It is their third recording in a row produced by BJ Burton, building on the distorted sound of the band's previous album '' Double Negative'' (2018).

Burton and ''Hey What'' were nominated in the Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical category at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards. It is their only album as a duo of Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker, all earlier Low albums being recorded as a trio.

Composition

''Hey What'', described as a minimalist album and an "organized chaos", builds its tracks around two vocals (performed by Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker), surrounded by a "roaring electronic noise", which ''Pitchfork'' compares to an "electrical storm in the cavern between two earbuds". The vocals are described as a "little deeper and rounder at the edges than" on previous records. ''Pitchfork'' adds that every sonic decision on the album is "shorn of excess and beheld with close attention, conveying feeling beyond words".

Thematically, ''Hey What'' creates a contrast between crystalline vocals and prevailing distortions, interpreted as a "reminder that darkness and light are inseparable". '' Loud and Quiet'' felt that the album was instilled with "a little more hope than much of Low's recent work", while not radiating "happy-clappy" energy it "hits a note" of stoicism; it makes no promises about the future, but seems at least to have the temerity to believe that there will be one".

Songs

The introduction song "White Horses" is characterized by stuttering pulse, "providing brittle accompaniment for Sparhawk and Parker's harmonizing about the inevitable cruelty of love".

''The Guardian'' thought the song "All Night" as the weirdest track on anyone else's album, feels like "a kind of breather" on ''Hey What''.

The sound of "Days Like These" abruptly transitions between "crystalline", "near-acapella" performances and relentless noise crushing the vocals "nearly beyond recognition and drawing up the tension with each hard cut". At the end the instrumentation subsides into a "wonderfully desolate vista of nudging kick drums, impressionistic vocals and rich, bassy veils of synth", which creates an atmosphere "brilliantly undercut" by the repetition of the word 'again', every other time "sounding more exhausted and smartly inverting the track's platitudinous opening mantra: "When you think you've seen everything, you'll find we're living in days like these".

The second-to-last track, "More", expresses the different elements characteristic for Low: "the flickering noise" elevated by "Parker's crystal vocals .to deliver a lilting melody that could just as easily be layered atop the skeletal atmospherics of their youthful slowcore or the relative accessibility of the almost-conventional-almost-hits" from their past discography ("Murderer" and "Monkey").

The closing song "The Price You Pay (It Must Be Wearing Off)" stands out as the only song on the album backed by a "rock backbeat" and releases all the tension culminated by the album. As soon as the release arrives, "it begins to recede. The clouds gather, the harmonies cycle uneasily; the drums cut out, then back in, then out for good". The ending is marked by the words "It must be wearing off", which read as a "promise of salvation at the end of the road flickers again out of view".

Release

The album was announced on June 22, 2021, accompanied by the release of the single "Days Like These".

Critical reception

''Hey What'' was met with widespread critical acclaim upon its release. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from professional publications, the album received an average score of 84, based on 22 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".

Andy Cush, writing for '' Pitchfork'', praised the way the record managed to "harness the unruliness of digital malfunction, make it palatable and even satisfying by tethering it to familiar" instruments like kick-drum. Cush highlighted the album's production to the positively crude output of the old-school electronic, pop, and hip-hop acts, which "have long since abandoned any fealty to the way sounds are supposed to behave in real-world acoustic environments". Additionally, Cush interpreted the album's continuous structure "without a goal in mind" and absence of a satisfying resolution, as a "recognition of deep and complicated truth in the old adage that the journey is more important than the destination".

Luke Cartledge of '' Loud and Quiet'' summed it up as a "richly imperfect LP". He considered the "most affecting moments" on ''Hey What'' appearing on the track where "structures suddenly collapse in on themselves", however, felt "looser" than their previous discography, "occasionally lacking a certain bite". The tense chain between "lyric and melody, timbre and dynamic, minute detail and overall narrative" narrowly holds intact, but "shaky", perhaps intentionally embodying the "trembling balances of social forces that seem more fragile than ever, and the tiny personal details that make it all more or less bearable day-to-day".

Several critics consider ''Hey What'' to be an improvement upon the stylistic choices of the band's previous record, '' Double Negative''. In comparison, the new output sounds more mature, confident, refined, and "melodically driven". Furthermore, it "deepens ''Double Negative''s exploration of sustained ambience, with long stretches devoted to the repetition of a single word, or the slow decay of a keyboard line". On a technical level, the later album advances "the timbral innovations that made ''Double Negative'' such a revelation".

Legacy

Following Mimi Parker's death in 2022, ''Hey What,'' Low's de facto last album, has been called "a tribute to Mimi Parker— and a masterpiece at the end of the line".

Accolades

Track listing

Personnel

Low
* Mimi Parker – vocals, percussion
* Alan Sparhawk – guitar, vocals

Technical
* BJ Burton – production, recording, mixing
* Huntley Miller – mastering

Charts

References

{{Authority control

2021 albums
Low (band) albums
Sub Pop albums
Albums produced by BJ Burton