February 25, 2006

Free Range Music: Low Skies' "Levelling"

"Levelling" has the kind of production where you feel like you can hear into every corner of the room. It's probably an aural illusion, but having so much headspace in the track allows the brushed drums to stoicly proceed while reverbed guitars face off against one another from opposite corners of the room. The track's dusty evocation, particularly the verse's two-chord trudge, suggests stifling heat and windless days spent awaiting impossible resolution out in the American plains. Low Skies singer Chris Salveter has a voice like Anthony Kiedis or Bono Vox's, but probably not in the way you're thinking (although it is interesting to think what would have happened to U2 had it taken its fixation with America as captured on Rattle And Hum and followed its vaguely bluesy, roots rock direction toward something like "Levelling"). Anyway, here Low Skies, a Chicago-based quintet that formed in 2000, display none of U2's bombast. Instead, the act seems resigned to slowly try to quit you from behind fences erected by the first few Palace Brothers singles. "Levelling" is taken from Low Skies' sophomore release All The Love I Could Find, which was issued on Flameshovel earlier this week. This MP3 comes courtesy of our friends over at Insound, and you can find several more at the act's Flameshovel page here.

Low Skies -- "Levelling."
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[Buy All The Love I Could Find from Insound]

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