Low Roar

Okay,

So, you're missing something and you don't even know what you're missing it until you go to it.

Not a helpful review of the Low Roar set, so I'll try to be helpful.

If you listen to Low Roar on your laptop, you have to wonder why they are called Low Roar? Is the elegiac theme threaded throughout the music, you wonder.

No, it's not that. You actually have to go to a concert to experience this, and what 'this' is is this (because you can't experience this in any other way): threading the music of Low Roar together is not a common theme, it's the almost subsonic bass drone.

Low Roar's music hums, it cried, it dies, continuously, and you have to be submerged in this, well, this low roar to experience, together with the artists, the feeling of being truly lost, bereft of any direction, any hope, any joy, to see where you really are right now.

Then, seeing this, being this, you come to find yourself in communion to the one group that can sing this pain, this loss, this hopelessness that you didn't even know you felt, sing it out, not to you, not to the concert goers, not to anywhere.

Low Roar sings it out into the silence, the nothingness, and for what purpose? why?

Okay, that.

Low Roar is the epitome of #introvert problems. Not once did they look out to the crowd listening to their music. They barely even looked at each other.

They didn't need to. They were so lost, not in themselves, not even, really, in the music, but moreso in the moment, and, being lost, separate, they were really one.

And the music they made...

Again, this is not something you get from listening to the media. Unless you have some really good speakers and you crank them up all the way.

That is: you're not 'listening to music.' You are recreating a concert.

This is what you need to do with their music: respect it.

Why?

Because, unlike most music out there, Low Roar's music respects you.

Okay, I don't know how Ryan Karazija did it, but somehow, moving to Iceland ... well, let's put it this way: this music could not have been created in California. This music needs Iceland, with its cold weather and its cool people. It needed the silence that does not exist in the hustle and bustle of this maddening crowd. And, in this silence in which this music was created, it is able to reach out, without trying, and touch you. Not 'touch you' in general. I mean it reaches out and touches you in a personal and intimate way that you do not find except in that moment of fulfillment when you see her and she sees you and you both look into each other's souls and see the hurt there, and, maybe not make it better, but just see it there, and understand.

That's what Low Roar's music is.

Here's what else Low Roar's music is.

First, let me tell you what it isn't.

Here are the drums: Boom-thumpa-thumpa-thumpa, Boom-thumpa-thumpa-thumpa
Here's the bass: dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum
Here's the guitar [whatever]
Here's the lead soloist: wha-wah-wha-wah-whatever

That's most of the music you find out there. Good music. eh-music, you know: whatever floats your boat, that music is out there to be listened to in the background so you can get on with your pointless life.

Low Roar's music. Here's what Low Roar's music.

When the drums are being played? There's a reason why the drums are being played, and when the drums are being played, it's a frikken revelation.

Oh, my God! Those are drums!

A revelation.

And an exercise in endless patience for the drummer, because the songs are not Boom-thumpa-thumpa-thumpa, but the payoff is just incredible when he does come in.

Same thing for the guitarist. The guitar spent more time in its stand than in the hand.

Low Roar's music requires from you, the listener, and intensity of listening for you to just get it, because if you don't listen intently, you won't get it.

You'll say: "I just don't get this."

Good. Don't. The door's over there.

But for those of you who try to get it.

The treasures therein are finer here than the finest gold you'll find in the mainstream music which panders to you. Low Roar's music doesn't pander, but it also doesn't demand. Not really.

It's there for you.

It's a gift.

Low Roar's music is a gift. They are touring throughout the U.S.A., right now. Buy you a golden ticket, go to the concert. You're not rewarding them by your presence, although they are appreciative of their audience. No, you will be rewarded with the music you'll experience nowhere else.

My girls!

Singing:

I've got sunshine on a cloudy day.
When it's cold outside, I've got the month of May.
I guess you'd say: "What can make feel this way?"
My girls. Talkin' 'bout My girls!

Boy, those Temptations sure knew what they were singing about!

"Will you marry me?"

We were at table, eating breakfast ("magic" eggs and sweet Italian sausage), when the radio began playing some sweet and pure and joyful music. I sighed. "There is no composer, before or since, like Beethoven" — it was his second symphony. Not his best one, but much better than most of the rest of the world could ever produce.

Don't get me wrong: other composers — Chopin, Schubert, Mahler, Brahms, Vivaldi, Handel ... ugh, Mozart — are unexcelled in their own ways, but you know what you're getting with them. Beethoven has something in his music that is ineffable and impossible to demystify. Beethoven's music, whether heard for the first time or the fiftieth, is always surprising. Beethoven's catalogue of music, too, spans from the Classical to the Romantic to Polyphonic chant (his last quartet in A-flat minor is eternal, and listening to it never fails to make swallowing past the lump in my throat impossible), and he is not "stuck" in a genre as the other greats were.

Okay, Bach, also, wins here.

I mentioned this to my cara spoza highlighting that even Mahler's music, in the worshipful imitation of Beethoven's, still could not ascend the heavens as did his. She mentioned that she was not familiar with his music.

Hmphf! The very first thing I ever did was to invite my beloved to was Mahler's second symphony. She flat-out refused! ... I suppose it would have been helpful if I gave her more than a few hours notice before the concert. But still.

I encouraged her to do so (learn Mahler) and told her this story.

Once upon a time, Mahler proposed to his wife, Alma (née Schindler), by composing his Fifth symphony — his exquisite Fifth Symphony. She was also a composer of note. Her response: "I didn't know you were writing a percussive symphony." Mahler listened to her. He crossed out the entire percussive section and rewrote it, toned down by half. She accepted his proposal, and now we have one of the most beautiful pieces of music in the world because of her. The End.

My sweet and dainty cara spoza tilted her head, reflecting on all that she had heard and said: "How can people not read and miss out on such wonderful moments?"

Me: "Well, I guess people are comfortable in their ign..."
She: "It. Was. A. Rhetorical. Question!"
Me, nonplussed [God! She is so beautiful with her stormy eyes]: "You should know by now that I have ready answers for questions, whether asked or unasked..."

She growled at me and stomped out of the room.

*Sigh* I just love her!

Now, my proposal to her was quite different than Mahler's to Alma; it started "simply enough" with an "I love you." But that is a story for another time.

P.S. Mama, you'll note from the lyrics it really, really, really is "Everyone know that it's Windy". Q.E.D.