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photosBuzz (Fire On The Bright Sky)
"Gut-wrenchingly raw and poetic in its intensity, The Low Lows creep stealthily and astound with the extent to which one album can be so considered and yet sound so un-contrived. Comparisons with Sparklehorse and Velvet Underground seem a given, and it is the lyricism evident in all three that is the true nexus of TLL's wares. The lyrics, so concerted in their concentration, would steal all attention if it were not for the expertly restrained instrumentation that surrounds them. Perfect. (5 stars)"
BL
Maverick Magazine (Fire On The Bright Sky)
"A fantastic audio experience...the most constructive use of feedback since Neil Young in the 1980's....slow, menacing but with a strange magic. (4/5)"
KM
Mercury Moon (Fire On The Bright Sky)
"The Low Lows have arisen from the ashes of NYC dream pop band Parker and Lily. I have to whisper it quietly. I can't quite believe what I am hearing. The ghost of Galaxie 500 haunts the grooves of this record. The mesh of melody and noise, the languid grace, blissed out chord progressions and dark undertows. Think The Velvet Underground drinking with Big Star. These songs hang suspended in heavenly reverb. P.L. Noon's weary croak slides in-between the guitar storms and organ flashes. Restless, burnished, bruised and beautiful."
Tony Heywood
Americana UK November 2006 (Fire On The Bright Sky)
"A suite of slow burning, lo- fi wonder – not simply songs, but songscapes.
This record is a must for anyone who has ever lost themselves in early Willard Grant Conspiracy, Yo La Tengo, Tindersticks, Sparklehorse or Grandaddy.
‘Fire on the Bright Sky’, unfathomably the debut album from this Athens, GA trio, immediately sounds like a classic from that genre and will compete with the best work from any of the bands just name checked.
P.L Noon, song writer and vocalist sets of his material with a fractured and fragile voice that seems creep out from under the speakers, drawing the bleached and scorched musical backdrop into focus with lyrics, at once perfectly congruous yet disparate.
"Always outside the porchlight
Bright eyes like deers beside the highway at twilight
Wont you come inside?"
Regulars to this site will all have heard records like ‘Fire on the Bright Sky’, but seldom will they have heard one so beautiful to listen to yet painful to absorb. "
Pete Gow
DJ Magazine (Elizabeth Pier single)
"Dark, intense, vulnerable, bleak, fascinating, triumphant, delicate, powerful! Call it what you will, whatever it is, it’s certainly not your average indie shoe-gazing fodder.(4/5)"
ORGAN Magaizne (Elizabeth Pier Single)
"They have such rewarding textures, drenched in deliciously subtle reverb and gently caressing feedback. Psychedelic galaxy touching dream-pop and look at those shoes aren’t that glorious, gaze away and fly with the positive melancholy and scratched surface warmth and the stark sweetness that wraps around you with the majesty of it all. The Low Lows (from Athens, Georgia) are wonderfully (strangely) unique and very very beautiful. (single of the week)"
Sean O
Tasty Fanzine (Fire On The Bright Sky)
"Another excellent release from Monotreme, this time in the form of some dark brooding southern gothic sounds, the music veers from hushed sweetness to raucous reverb whilst never loosing its warmth or sensibility. This will appeal to any gentle soul with a fondness for the forlorn sounds made familiar by the likes of My Morning Jacket and Castanets."
ORGAN Magazine (album of the week) (Fire On The Bright Sky)
"There’s this warm reassuring glow, or is it a hum? It’s a glowing hum, whatever it is, it’s warm and inviting and just very very easy on the soul. I first found the Low Lows one fine night whist out there surfing for those sounds that we know are out there if we look, they pulled me in and downloads were downloaded and played on the radio and burnt off tracks placed in the special treasure box. Came as no shock whatsoever when our favourite label announced they were to release the album over on this side of the Atlantic – Monotreme strike again. The Low lows have that same understated magic that makes us love Thee More Shallows so much and the production here is just so so perfect, it’s that 2.00am warm summer nightness again. Listening to the Athens GA trio is like siting outback in the quiet of the night (while the rest of the world is sleeping) watching and listening to the insects glow and hum – not right there in front of you, out in the distance somewhere, just out of reach, kind of like gloworms somewhere out there hard to focus on in the starlight. Deliciously dreamy and glowing in a wonderfully understated Galaxie 500 alt.country kind of way. Walls of gentle dissonance and country narcosis and soothing gentle caressing white noise beauty and steal guitars and Tindersticks and Yo Lo Tango and a radiantly slow rolling panorama that makes you so sure all is right. An almost distant sound, a stark warm caressing beautiful sound, a rather unique and rather special sound, and blue enough to float in. Beautiful.And then just when you think you have a handle on it there's The Russian Ending."
Los Angeles Weekly (Fire On The Bright Sky)
"Monstrously sad and brilliantly anachronistic... Three sparkling, slightly surreal rock icons that seem to have been constructed out of feedback and white noise. Like werewolves mutating, feedback drips from freshly exposed fangs... Then suddenly they return to us, playing pretty, remorseful songs about the carnage they caused..."
All Music (Fire On The Bright Sky)
"The Low Lows create pretty, pretty lo-fi dirges driven by lightly chugging guitars, Farfisa organ, and treated vocals. Some might place them firmly in the lineage of the Velvet Underground -- and the feedback squalls and oddly archaic tendencies would back that connection. But at times there's also something soft and delicately enchanting about the Low Lows that places them in line with acts like Galaxie 500, Red House Painters, or the more delicate tendencies of Sparklehorse. Highlights include the Western-gothic drama of "Dear Flies, Love Spider" and Wolves Eat Dogs." The Low Lows also seem to be at their best when they slow things down to a funereal pace and extract every drop of drama and beauty out of each moment, as in the hauntingly gorgeous "Poor Georgia." This is a solid, lovely effort that sails on the back of strong songwriting and uniquely mournful vocals."
LA Times (Fire On The Bright Sky)
""Dear Flies, Love Spider": The Low Lows. Welcome the sadness, the pathos, the noise. The Low Lows are born out of the New York duo of Parker Noon and Lily Wolfe, and behind the screeching (not howling!) feedback, the aleatoric piano, the Farfisa organ, the tremolo on nearly everything, is a genuine opening of the human heart. Noon tends toward the monotone on "Dear Flies," which will raise comparisons to the Velvet Underground, but the musical influences on the Low Lows' mesmerizing debut album stretch in many directions, and his vocals actually carry a resonance more likened to early Michael Stipe. This track takes enough time so that listeners can experience every sonic paper cut."
indieworkshop.com (Fire On The Bright Sky)
"There is something distinctly frozen about The Low Lows. The songs don't appear to move at all over their duration, but they are utterly seared in surges of intensity, of lyrical oddities, of terrifying pulses and dark corners. It stems partly from the densely minimal arrangements of one-note guitars and drums that thud the side of your skull, but it is mostly attributable to the entire frostiness of the sound world. The gentle arpeggios of 'St. Neil' are indicative of a veiled melodic sensibility reminiscent of, oddly enough, semi-namesakes Low. The gorgeous bottlenecked guitar and cannily crafted strings in the background lend some lamenting lyricism to the darkly languorous audio-dramatics we are privy to.
With that monumentally pretty song being followed by another similarly colourful and swelling jewel of a slow burn, 'Wolves Eat Dogs', one could easily mistake The Low Lows as the diseased, Morricone-influenced baby brothers of Low. But this would be to miss the point entirely. Where the Sparhawks have the pleading stance of wronged innocents, P.L. Noon from The Low Lows knows exactly what is wrong. He just can't do anything about it. "I never should have left the woods, I should have known I never could have not hurt you…" he pitifully cries. It is Noon's voice that carries a large portion of 'Fire On The Bright Sky', such is the relative restraint of the arrangements below him. And it is this restraint that allows the barely-intelligible word to become unerringly prevalent. When he wails about 'poor Georgia girls' it is difficult to know what he means, but thunderously easy to know that he means it.
As 'Fire On The Bright Sky' relaxes around you, its luxuriant atmosphere caressing the surrounding air, it becomes utterly obvious that this is the work of people who are well-versed in delicate constructions and who know the value of waiting before giving a musical pay-off. The stop-start slapdash of '(No Such Thing As) Sarah Jane' is expertly paced with an ending so impeccably woven through with viscous horns and strings that satisfaction is not so much guaranteed as gospel-intoned. The pacing of the record as a whole is guilty of a monumental slow-down, but this does nothing to stifle the enjoyment. If anything, it is a record that needs to slow down anyway. It isn't hard to get comfortable with the gradual downward spiral that reaches its lowest ebb on the final spoken-word and organ bluster of 'The Russian Ending'. The beauty is never not entirely at the forefront, with the dark ramblings of 'Little by little we never met again' providing the necessary gravity to this most mournful of records."
Creative Loafing Atlanta (Fire On The Bright Sky)
"Feature article"