[LOW MOVIE (HOW TO QUIT SMOKING)
screens Tuesday July 23 rd at 7:30 pm at the Capitol Theatre.]
Review
by Bob Ignizio
I miss the days when MTV used to
actually show music videos as much as anyone, but I'm still not sure
I'm ready to pay money to watch videos on the big screen. Concert
films, rockumentarys, sure, but a collection of music videos by the
same band? That seems more suited for home viewing to my mind. But if
you happen to disagree with me on that point, and happen to be a fan
of the band Low, then by all means get yourself out to the Capitol
Theatre on July 23rd 2013 at 7:30 pm to see LOW MOVIE (HOW TO QUIT
SMOKING).
For
two decades now, Duluth, Minnesota band Low has been releasing albums
and, with director Philip Harder, making music videos to promote
them. If you're unfamiliar with the band, which I was prior to
watching this, they take a quiet, slow approach to rock. There's more
than a hint of retro rockabilly flavored noir in guitarist/vocalist
Alan Sparhawk's reverb heavy guitar and drummer/vocalist Mimi
Parker's brush work, but it's filtered through a modern indie rock
sensibility. It's the kind of music you might expect to hear on the
soundtrack to a David Lynch film, dark and dreamlike. My kind of
stuff, really.
As
for the accompanying visuals, it's pretty much music video 101: lots
of mildly surreal imagery married to footage of the band miming to
their songs with occasional forays into more conceptual pieces.
Harder has a nice visual style, but I'm not sure there's really much
of substance here. Certainly there's nothing to tie the various
videos together, and aside from a brief introduction, nothing about
the band and/or the filmmaker personally, or how and why they work
together. The videos are left to speak for themselves, and in that
context I can't really say there's anything here that stands out. The
music is quite good, but as mentioned at the start of this review,
whether that warrants a trip to the theater to see this or not is
debatable. Definitely one for the fans. For anyone else: 2 out of 4
stars.
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