The Zoo    Wed May 31

The Ambitious Lovers’ first Zoo gig is histrionic and musically verbose in all the right ways. Sitting on amps with a distorted uke, makeshift drums and a lap keyboard makes it rickety. Old songs, a couple of newer ones and a truncated cover of Interpol’s NYC make everyone hush. They get closer to perfecting their feral child, constantly on the verge of breaking things with every show.

Brisbane’s current improv-with-lots-of-familiar-people-in-it band, I/O Experiment, hit via a natural-seeming segue from their tuning and soundcheck time. All staticky guitars and floor toms and thuds, they rise and fall and repeat through a slowly-packing Zoo. The exact atmosphere you’d expect from guys standing around in the dark, looking blankly at their instruments and opening for Low.

Low have always been troubled and troubling. Their albums are a constant pull between hints of greatness and minor missteps, you can’t help trying to separate product and intent.

Opener Monkey from their latest and least slowcore release, The Great Destroyer, sets the loud/soft, intense/just plain tense vibe for the night. They follow through with the best tracks from that record—Everybody’s Song, Pissing, When I Go Deaf. The poppier stuff from 2002’s Trust takes on a fresh melancholy, Canada is call-and-response as you’ve never heard it, sparse and controlled.

In countries where Low play often, it is customary to sit. But tonight Sparhawk’s face is so watchable, alternately lolling and looking worriedly at his wife/drummer, Mimi Parker, and new bassist Matt Livingston. He coolly takes requests in the encore and leaves behind one of the most unexpected shows this year.

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