Low enlist Jeff Tweedy to produce The Invisible Way, release live EP

Photo by Zoran Orlic

Masters of musical light and shadow Low will release The Invisible Way in March. This album marks their 20th anniversary, and shows Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy's connection to Duluth runs deep. Not only did Wilco received a key to the city this summer during a performance at Bayfront Festival Park and they raised some money to help with flood relief, but Tweedy opened up the band's Chicago studio for Low to create this record, which is their tenth full-length.

This bond was formed also because Low's Alan Sparhawk particularly dug Tweedy's production work on Mavis Staples' 2010 album, You Are Not Alone. Will this be the most soulful and/or rootsy Low release of them all?

See Also:
Wilco get the key to Duluth at Bayfront Festival Park, 7/1/12
Duluth flood updates: Low, Charlie Parr, & Trampled by Turtles

In case you're curious, here's Tweedy and Staples giving life to the title track. And if you think this means that we might have on our hands another Rick Rubin type injecting new creative spirit into mid-career artists, er, you are not alone:



So far, what we can gather in actuality about the upcoming Low album is that there's going to be some fuzz and some really anthemic piano (and maybe some peaches). That is, judging by this trailer. Press materials tell us that the album is "about intimacy, the drug war, the class war, plain old war war, archaeology and love," and drummer/vocalist Mimi Parker is lead singer on five of the eleven tracks. Not a bad way to stir some anticipation for the follow-up to 2011's C'mon.



Another bit of business worth mentioning here is that Low is giving away a free EP right here, right now. Plays Nice Places has six songs recorded live during the band's summer tour with Death Cab for Cutie. "Waiting" is a brand-new track included in the set. Download it below.


"I wish we had someone to play bass on this song," Alan Sparhawk says at the beginning of this live version of "Words" from 1994's I Could Live in Hope. A familiar voice jumps back at him, "I could do it!" "Bass tech" Benjamin Gibbard takes the role with gusto.

Getting the sense already that 2013 is going to be a monumentous year for Low.