In 2018, will turn twenty-five. Since 1993, Alan Sparhawk andMimi Parker—the married couple whose heaven-and-earth harmonieshave always held the band’s center—have pioneered a subgenre,shrugged off its strictures, recorded a , become amagnetic onstage force, and emerged as one of music’s moststeadfast and vital vehicles for pulling light from our darkestemotional recesses. But Low will not commemorate its firstquarter-century with mawkish nostalgia or safe runs through songbookfavorites. Instead, in faithfully defiant fashion, Low will release itsmost brazen, abrasive (and, paradoxically, most empowering) albumever: Double Negative, an unflinching eleven-song quest throughsnarling static and shattering beats that somehow culminates in thebrightest pop song of Low’s career.

To make Double Negative, Low reenlisted B.J. Burton, the quietlyenergetic and adventurous producer who has made records withJames Blake, Sylvan Esso, and The Tallest Man on Earth in recentyears while working as one of the go-to figures at Bon Iver’s homestudio, April Base. Burton recorded Low’s last album, 2015’s , at April Base, adding might to many of its beats andsquelch and frisson beneath many of its melodies.

This time, though, Sparhawk, Parker, and bassist Steve Garringtonknew they wanted to go further with Burton and his palette of sounds,to see what someone who is, as Sparhawk puts it, “a hip-hop guy”could truly do to their music. Rather than obsessively write andrehearse at home in Duluth, Minnesota, they would often headsoutheast to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, arriving with sketches and ideasthat they would work on for days with Burton. Band and producerbecame collaborative cowriters, building the pieces up and breakingthem down and building them again until their purpose and force feltclear. As the world outside seemed to slide deeper into instability,Low repeated this process for the better part of two years, ponderingthe results during tours and breaks at home. They considered not onlyhow the fragments fit together but also how, in the United States of2018, they functioned as statements and salves.

Double Negative is, indeed, a record perfectly and painfully suited forour time. Loud and contentious and commanding, Low fights for theworld by fighting against it. It begins in pure bedlam, with a beat builtfrom a loop of ruptured noise waging war against the paired voices ofSparhawk and Parker the moment they begin to sing during themassive “Quorum.” For forty minutes, they indulge the battle, tryingto be heard amid the noisy grain, sometimes winning and sometimesbeing tossed toward oblivion. In spite of the mounting noise,Sparhawk and Parker still sing. Or maybe they sing because of thenoise. For Low, has there ever really been a difference?