Alan Sparhawk enters the organic juice bar not like a rockstar, but like a guy that has been there a thousand times. He peruses the bottled juices and grabs a couple then orders some oatmeal. They have indie rock playing over the speakers and Sparhawk nods along as he talks about the formative years of his band and their ideology while occasionally stopping to take a bite.

The legendary Duluth slow-core band, Low, was founded in 1993 by Sparhawk on guitar and vocals with his now wife Mimi Parker on drums and vocals and their original bassist John Nichols. The sound for the band came from wanting to be the counter culture’s counter culture. They played much slower than most rock bands at the time and went very minimal with the instrumentation with a focus on poetic lyrics and melodies between Sparhawk and Parker.

After grunge exploded onto the scene and hijacked the airways there was a considerably high demand for underground acts.

“There were a lot of breaks in the early 90s. A lot of those bands became mainstream.” Sparhawk said of the bands that were in the underground in the mid to late 80’s that would later become the staples of the 90s.

Low started as a band with the motive to do something different. However, trying to make a name for yourself coming out of Duluth, Minnesota isn’t the easiest task — especially prior to the internet. Sparhawk always had that DIY punk mindset about his art and music and didn’t want to be a mega-star. But he knew he was making something worth the effort and he was able to get the first few recordings and demos into the hands of the right people so they could be heard and promoted.

Alan Sparhawk in Glasgow. Photo by Martin Hunter

When it came to the overall trajectory of the band and their sound in those formative years, Sparhawk thought little of it; he is someone that appears to be perpetually focused on the present. Once a record is done he moves on to what is next without pondering on what was released. He also doesn’t want to plan ahead and instead focuses on the record they’re making at that time.

“I remember intentionally not planning ahead. I remember just feeling like if I think too far ahead of this or plan out that ‘this is what I want to do,’ I felt like it would ruin it… Planning ahead implies expectations and you’re going to spend a lot of time being depressed…” Sparhawk said. “If you can be like ‘I don’t know what’s going on and I don’t care what people think.’ I think that’s immensely freeing.”

Low was able to find the underground sweet spot. They had the fans and the critical acclaim but they never had a smash hit nor were they selling out arenas. But there was, and is,a strong following.

“They could always bring in a thousand people on average anywhere they went whether it was Baltimore or Israel,” said long time friend of the band, Marc Gartman. But most of the big bands from the 90s aren’t around anymore and if they are, they aren’t releasing music that sounds any different from their first records. “The bigger it gets, the more fleeting it is,” Sparhawk said when addressing bands that were selling out massive shows but eventually fell off. “Imagine for a few years you’re going out and selling out arenas where thousands of people are singing your songs and everyone knows you. Then after a few years you’re playing casinos in front of a couple hundred people that kind of like your stuff… That’s a hit man… That decline must be just devastating.”

Sparhawk attributes a lot of their success to not being commercially successful. He was content as long as he had the freedom to create art on his own terms, that was what was most important to him.

For nearly 30 years now, Low has been a creative force in the underground and Sparhawk meant to keep himself interested in what they were doing. At first, he wanted to prove a point with their use of minimalism

“Our theory was to show how much we could do with just a little bit,” Sparhawk said. They did just that for a solid run of records but after a few releases Sparhawk was no longer comfortable staying within the slowcore parameters.

“We started the band doing something weird. We were doing something contrary and I think that’s what the band is really about. Not necessarily the slowness. We did that for a couple records then we came to the studio and thought maybe we should do something different and we slowly evolved and did whatever we wanted and really pushed ourselves instead of making the same record…” Sparhawk said. “I can remember the moment where we had done a few records but I thought, ‘I can kind of already hear how we’re going to play them and I don’t think that’s interesting anymore. So let’s find a better way to do this.’” Just as before, they did just that while maintaining their audience and still pulling in good reviews for each release.

Low’s latest record, “Hey What,” is one of their most acclaimed to date. With so many different twists and turns of their sound while still coming out with quality records, they have built up quite a legacy for their very strong run of releases. “Hey What” is also arguably the most noisey and abrasive record they have released. But at its core, it is still a Low album.

BJ Burton, who has produced the last three Low albums, takes the minimal sound and distorts it.

“Nowadays their records seem almost 3D. It’s just the way they let things breathe,” said Gartman in an attempt to describe the indescribable sound of “Hey What”. . Sparhawk has praise for every producer Low has worked with, stating that they have all been on the same page and work with them almost symbiotically.

This evolution of sound for the band is directly connected to Sparhawk. He creates what interests him and what gets him excited and that shows in the music while still being on the ground level of rock music to find the sound that best contradicts the current soundscape.

Alan Sparhawk’s Beautiful Chaos