Low, a band for whom the word ‘slowcore’ had to be invented, sound like nothing else you’ve ever heard. The lingering tempo and mournful lyrics of husband and wife duo Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker paint a sweeping emotional canvas where the real heartbreak is found in the moments between notes, where the empty spaces swallow you whole. After a week of missed calls to their hometown of Duluth, Minnesota, Hype tracked down Sparhawk in Melbourne via the mobile phone of their ex-Perth labelmates Sodastream, and asked him where Low’s unique sound originated.

“We were fairly young when we started the band, and there were certain influences that we were pulling from, but it became evident right away that this was a new thing that not a lot of people had done before,” he explains. “There were some elements going on that hadn’t been explored very much — mostly it was the spiritual, transcendent thing that can happen when you explore minimalism and repetition, quietness or subtleness.

“A slow pace rips a song open and opens it up to a bit more, I don’t want to say drama, but it seems like a lot of we do is stripping things down to a very simple language in the hope that in doing so, whatever you’re trying to say will be a little bit more powerful.

“At the same time, you’re taking a risky road in that most people in passing are just going to hear something quiet and think that there’s nothing going on here, I’m not going to listen and invest my mind. But we try to make something there for people who do listen.”

Low’s last two albums, ‘Secret Name’ and ‘Things We Lost in the Fire’, have been produced by the legendary Steve Albini, a man known more for his mastery of fuzz than for Low’s brand of sparse minimalism.

“Steve seems to work at the same pace and ethic as we do, which is usually pretty fast,” explains Sparhawk. “The Auteurs record he did was very lush. He is just really good at capturing sound, that’s why a lot of those harder records have such an edge. If that amp is screaming, he’s going to pick that sound up and get it on tape. There’s an art to that.”

Their last long-player opens with Sparhawk and Parker in duet, crying “when they found your body, giant X’s on your eyes”, and from there delves into a sombre, dark lyrical world perfectly in tune with the sprawl of the music. Sparhawk claims that the band’s reputation for serious, dark songwriting stems from a desire for honesty.

“It’s kind of a personal thing and I’m pretty picky about what I’ll let myself say. We’ve always felt that whatever is said is going to have to be something you really mean, because you are going to have to get up in front of people and say it. I don’t think our lyrics are terribly negative, but they are serious.”

On Low’s first visit to Australia, Sparhawk admits to being tentative about the size of their audiences on the other side of the world.

“We get correspondence once in a while, but it is always hard to tell until you come and do a show and people show up,” he says. “We always expect twenty people to show up, so it’s nice when everything goes well. Once in a while, maybe thirty people will come.”

Their gig at the Watershed on February 14 gives Low an opportunity to play in a small-scale music festival, but Sparhawk is openly relieved that they aren’t faced with a mega-festival situation.

“If we’re thrown on the bill of a huge music festival, we don’t go so well,” he laughs. “It’s Huey Lewis and the News, and now here’s Low! Well that was fun, bring on the Red Hot Chilli Peppers!”

As serious and slow as their reputation claims them to be, Low have, of late, begun to rock out a little more. On their wonderful ‘Christmas’ EP, one could have almost accused them of being, well, jaunty.

“The Christmas EP has some shiny moments,” Sparhawk concedes. “The more we do this, the more we are open to letting go and thinking that if a song happens to be somewhat positive, let’s let that be, let’s not stifle that, obviously that’s something we’re feeling.

“There’s some rock business going on the last album. We’ve got a couple of new songs that may be construed as a little more rock, but it’s just something we step into a little bit once in a while, to mixed success as far as our own feelings about it, but it depends on the night. Sometimes playing the loud songs feels a little wrong.”