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Hey What

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Hey What
Studio album by
Low
ReleasedSeptember 10, 2021
Genre
Length46:08
LabelSub Pop
ProducerBJ Burton
Low chronology
Double Negative
(2018) 		Hey What
(2021)
Singles from Hey What
  1. "Days Like These"
    Released: June 22, 2021[5]
  2. "Disappearing"
    Released: July 20, 2021[6]
  3. "More"
    Released: August 18, 2021[7]

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,[8] building on the distorted sound of the band's previous album Double Negative (2018).[3]

Burton and Hey What were nominated in the Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical category at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards.[9] It is their only album as a duo of Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker, all earlier Low albums being recorded as a trio.

Composition

[edit]

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".[10]

Thematically, Hey What creates a contrast between crystalline vocals and prevailing distortions, interpreted as a "reminder that darkness and light are inseparable".[10] 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".[11][12]

Songs

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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".[10][12]

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.[12]

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".[10][11]

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").[11]

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".[10]

Release

[edit]

The album was announced on June 22, 2021, accompanied by the release of the single "Days Like These".[5][11]

Critical reception

[edit]
Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
SourceRating
AnyDecentMusic?8.1/10[13]
Metacritic84/100[14]
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[15]
Beats Per Minute91%[16]
Clash9/10[17]
The Guardian[12]
Exclaim!8/10[18]
Loud and Quiet7/10[11]
Mojo[19]
Paste8.6/10[20]
Pitchfork8.4/10[10]
PopMatters7/10[3]
Uncut9/10[21]

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".[14]

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".[10]

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".[11]

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".[10][11][12] On a technical level, the later album advances "the timbral innovations that made Double Negative such a revelation".[11]

Legacy

[edit]

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".[22]

Accolades

[edit]
Hey What on year-end lists
Publication List Rank Ref.
The Guardian The 50 Best Albums of 2021
31
[23]
Les Inrockuptibles Adrien Durand's Top 10 Albums of 2021
1
[24]
Arnaud Ducome's Top 10 Albums of 2021
1
Rémi Boiteux's Top 10 Albums of 2021
10
Valentin Gény's Top 10 Albums of 2021
3
NPR NPR Music's 50 Best Albums of 2021
21
[25]
Paste The 50 Best Albums of 2021
12
[26]
Pitchfork The 50 Best Albums of 2021
5
[27]
The 31 Best Rock Albums of 2021 —
[28]

Track listing

[edit]

All tracks are written by Low.

Hey What track listing
No.TitleLength
1."White Horses"5:03
2."I Can Wait"4:02
3."All Night"5:14
4."Disappearing"3:32
5."Hey"7:41
6."Days Like These"5:20
7."There's a Comma After Still"1:51
8."Don't Walk Away"4:07
9."More"2:10
10."The Price You Pay (It Must Be Wearing Off)"7:08
Total length:46:08

Personnel

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Low

  • Mimi Parker – vocals, percussion
  • Alan Sparhawk – guitar, vocals

Technical

Charts

[edit]
Chart performance for Hey What
Chart (2021) Peak
position
Austrian Albums (Ö3 Austria)[29] 75
Belgian Albums (Ultratop Flanders)[30] 11
Belgian Albums (Ultratop Wallonia)[31] 60
Dutch Albums (Album Top 100)[32] 27
German Albums (Offizielle Top 100)[33] 32
Irish Albums (OCC)[34] 44
Italian Albums (FIMI)[35] 89
Portuguese Albums (AFP)[36] 41
Scottish Albums (OCC)[37] 10
Swiss Albums (Schweizer Hitparade)[38] 37
UK Albums (OCC)[39] 23
UK Independent Albums (OCC)[40] 7

References

[edit]
  1. ^ Quick, RaeAnn (October 2, 2021). "Album Review: Low – Hey What". MXDWN. Archived from the original on November 10, 2022.
  2. ^ Willems, Jasper (September 10, 2021). "Low on HEY WHAT: Hope in Unfamiliar Sound". Under the Radar. Archived from the original on September 10, 2021.
  3. ^ a b c Britt, Thomas (September 8, 2021). "Low's HEY WHAT Could Use Some Drums". PopMatters. Archived from the original on September 8, 2021.
  4. ^ Fischer, Reed (September 13, 2021). "Album of the Week: Low, Hey What". The Current. Minnesota Public Radio. Archived from the original on September 21, 2021.
  5. ^ a b Sodomsky, Sam (June 22, 2021). "Low: 'Days Like These' Track Review". Pitchfork. Condé Nast. Archived from the original on June 22, 2021.
  6. ^ Clarke, Patrick (July 20, 2021). "Low share gorgeous new single 'Disappearing'". NME. NME Networks. Archived from the original on July 20, 2021.
  7. ^ Breathnach, Cillian (August 18, 2021). "Ahead of new album Hey What, Low release new single and video 'More'". Uncut. NME Networks. Archived from the original on August 18, 2021.
  8. ^ Sam Sodomsky (September 1, 2021). "Low Still Don't Sound Like Anyone Else". Pitchfork. Retrieved September 4, 2021.
  9. ^ Lawler, Christa (November 24, 2021). "Low's 'Hey What' gets Grammy nod | Duluth News Tribune". Archived from the original on November 24, 2021. Retrieved December 2, 2021.
  10. ^ a b c d e f g h Andy Cush (September 10, 2021). "Low: HEY WHAT Album Review". Pitchfork. Retrieved September 10, 2021.
  11. ^ a b c d e f g h Luke Cartledge (September 6, 2021). "Low - Hey What - Album Review - Loud and Quiet". Loud and Quiet. Retrieved September 6, 2021.
  12. ^ a b c d e Alexis Petridis (September 9, 2021). "Low: Hey What review – a magnificent redefinition of rock music". The Guardian. Retrieved September 10, 2021.
  13. ^ "Hey What by Low reviews". AnyDecentMusic?. Retrieved September 11, 2021.
  14. ^ a b "Critic Reviews for Hey What - Metacritic". Metacritic. Retrieved September 10, 2021.
  15. ^ Mark Deming. "Hey What - Low - Songs, Reviews, Credits - AllMusic". AllMusic. Retrieved September 10, 2021.
  16. ^ Jasper Willems (September 10, 2021). "Album Review: Low - HEY WHAT". Beats Per Minute. Retrieved September 10, 2021.
  17. ^ Nick Roseblade (September 9, 2021). "Low - HEY WHAT". Clash Magazine. Retrieved September 10, 2021.
  18. ^ Daniel Sylvester (September 9, 2021). "Low Remain at the Top of Their Creative Peak on 'HEY WHAT'". Exclaim!. Retrieved September 10, 2021.
  19. ^ Keith Cameron. "Low – Hey What". Mojo. No. 335. p. 91. Archived from the original on August 18, 2021. Retrieved September 5, 2021. Alt URL
  20. ^ Max Freedman (September 8, 2021). "Low: 'Hey What' Album Review - Paste". Paste. Retrieved September 10, 2021.
  21. ^ Louis Pattison (September 10, 2021). "Low – Hey What". Uncut. No. 293. p. 18–19. Archived from the original on September 10, 2021. Retrieved September 5, 2021. Alt URL
  22. ^ Knapman, Chris (November 26, 2022). "HEY WHAT: a tribute to Mimi Parker— and a masterpiece at the end of the line". Medium. Retrieved November 14, 2023.
  23. ^ "The 50 best albums of 2021: 50-11". the Guardian. November 30, 2021. Retrieved December 5, 2021.
  24. ^ "Découvrez le top 10 des albums de 2021 par nos critiques musiques" [Discover the top 10 albums of 2021 by our music critics]. Les Inrockuptibles (in French). Paris. December 28, 2021. Archived from the original on December 29, 2021. Retrieved December 29, 2021.
  25. ^ "NPR Music's 50 Best Albums of 2021 (30-21)". NPR. December 1, 2021. Retrieved December 5, 2021.
  26. ^ "The 50 Best Albums of 2021". Paste. November 29, 2021. Retrieved November 30, 2021.
  27. ^ Sodomsky, Sam (December 7, 2021). "The 50 Best Albums of 2021". Pitchfork. Retrieved December 8, 2021.
  28. ^ Corcoran, Nina (December 8, 2021). "The 31 Best Rock Albums of 2021". Lists & Guides. Pitchfork Media. Retrieved June 16, 2023.
  29. ^ "Austriancharts.at – Low – Hey What" (in German). Hung Medien. Retrieved September 21, 2021.
  30. ^ "Ultratop.be – Low – Hey What" (in Dutch). Hung Medien. Retrieved September 19, 2021.
  31. ^ "Ultratop.be – Low – Hey What" (in French). Hung Medien. Retrieved September 19, 2021.
  32. ^ "Dutchcharts.nl – Low – Hey What" (in Dutch). Hung Medien. Retrieved September 17, 2021.
  33. ^ "Offiziellecharts.de – Low – Hey What" (in German). GfK Entertainment Charts. Retrieved September 17, 2021.
  34. ^ "Official Irish Albums Chart Top 50". Official Charts Company. Retrieved September 17, 2021.
  35. ^ "Album – Classifica settimanale WK 37 (dal 10.9.2021 al 16.9.2021)" (in Italian). Federazione Industria Musicale Italiana. Retrieved September 18, 2021.
  36. ^ "Portuguesecharts.com – Low – Hey What". Hung Medien. Retrieved September 27, 2021.
  37. ^ "Official Scottish Albums Chart Top 100". Official Charts Company. Retrieved September 18, 2021.
  38. ^ "Swisscharts.com – Low – Hey What". Hung Medien. Retrieved September 19, 2021.
  39. ^ "Official Albums Chart Top 100". Official Charts Company. Retrieved September 17, 2021.
  40. ^ "Official Independent Albums Chart Top 50". Official Charts Company. Retrieved September 18, 2021.
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