Schnipper’s Slept On
- story THE FADER
Each Tuesday, FADER editor Matthew Schnipper highlights an underappreciated recent release he thinks we need to know about. This week it’s Low’s Secret Name. Watch a weird video for “Home”, buy Secret Name and read Schnipper’s thoughts on the album after the jump.
This morning I got up early, so I watched How I Met Your Mother on my computer (Spoiler alert, by the way.) This episode is Ted’s marriage to Stella. She gets mad when he invites Robin, his ex-girlriend, to the wedding. She thinks it is completely inappropriate for exes to be at weddings because it opens up old gloopy feelings. But that rage subsides when she gets word that her ex-husband refused to drive their daughter to the wedding. Ted swoops in to save the day, and figures the pain of Robin’s attendance will be moot after he brings in the daughter. But when he goes to pick her up, the ex-husband is surprisingly emotional and Ted spontaneously invites him, too. Back at the wedding, Stella is upset and decides that both her ex-husband and Robin need to be dis-invited. Ted tells Robin she has to leave, which she is thankful for, as she confesses that things aren’t over between them in her head. But on the other end, Stella and her ex have apparently rekindled, and she decides to not marry Ted and gets back with her ex. All of this, at 8:30AM, was kind of funny to me, because this weekend I went to an ex-girlfriend’s wedding. But it wasn’t that weird and we didn’t get back together.
Cassie, the ex-girlfriend, used to really like Secret Name. It’s weird. “Home,” the last song, is creepy, with tiny bells and thick, jackhammer bass. Home, everybody wants to go home/ even when they’re small, even when they’re old. It is a depressing song. The entire record is depressing. Low, before (and after) Secret Name, had a specific slow bliss to their gentleness. Here the lack of rev is more powerless, less kindly folksy. Two of the three members of the band were a couple. I can’t imagine the amount of brutal closeness that comes from making such a harsh record with an elected loved one.
I saw Low at Peabody Music School’s library in Baltimore. I was so scared I wouldn’t be able to see, but before they played everyone went out to the lobby, out to the front to smoke. I stood there and held my spot. Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk brought out their kid and sang her a song about cookies and cats. Parker played with a washcloth over her snare drum. I was a freshman in college. Cassie was, too. She saw them on the same tour, but in Chicago, as she spent that year at Northwestern before transferring to George Washington, where I went. It was a difficult relationship. Since then, I haven’t done myself a ton of marriage-inducing favors. Cassie found her husband, and it was nice to be at her wedding. Her hair is darker now, she’s still tall and she got kind of religious (not Jewish). Unlike TV, there were no mushy feelings summoned from our guts, just a weird remembrance. The pumpkin soup was great and the band wasn’t bad, either. I can pretty much say I was the best dancer there.
The next day after the wedding, my friend Christina sent me a text message and said she is pretty sure she doesn’t want to get married any time soon. I’m not sure if I agree with that. I don’t think I want to be married soon, but I like the idea of getting married and having a party and people dressing up on your behalf. Everyone was happy, people hugged. My sister and her boyfriend came down from Vermont, my three living grandparents came to the house for brunch. At one point there were five dogs in the house. The leaves in Connecticut looked amazing and I got to wear my nice topcoat. I am sure that I can get someone to marry me for things to be that nice. My mother was married one year when she was my age. She lived in New York City, too. My dad had four more years to go. I wonder if it was worth it, that twenty-six to thirty-year-old freedom. I can’t imagine I will get better with age, things have to peak at twenty-five, right? Was I better last year than this? I was less single then. I should have tried to have a life-changing party. I kind of hope I didn’t miss my chance.
Related:
- Schnipper’s Slept On
- Schnipper’s Slept On
- Schnipper’s Slept On
- Schnipper’s Slept On
- March Is Schnipper Month: P
- posted on Oct 21, 2008 in MP3 / STREAMS
- tags experimental, Low, rock
