The cover of the Copenhagen band Lower's 2012 EP, Walk on Heads, featured vocalist Adrian Toubro, head shaved, singing dramatically in a live setting. Its look and feel was reminiscent of an early hardcore 7", and the music itself possessed a similar kind of fury. Their full-length debut, Seek Warmer Climes, features a more romantic, refined image of a man in white lounging in the dirt, announcing a shift in Lower's sound. (The photo was taken by Lower bassist Kristian Emdal, who plays in Vår with Iceage's Elias Bender Rønnenfelt, and who also did the cover art for Iceage's You're Nothing.) They're still noisy, but this time around they're focusing more on the jagged, wordy music you could easily term as "post-punk".
The thing you'll notice first on Seek is the growth in Toubro's approach. He croons, and sighs, and doesn't shout as often. He possesses a writerly approach—the vocal lines often ramble and collide with the music as if he wants to cram in as many syllables as possible regardless of what the rest of the band is doing. His delivery smacks of the type of vocalists that gravitate towards new wave and death rock (and he somewhat resembles Bryan Ferry at times, too).
Lower aren't making pop songs, but the best songs here have hooks. The central motif and narrative of opener "Another Life" ("Strive for another life/ Open your arms/ Invite it inside/ I'll show you what it takes to stay balanced"), along with Toubro's upbeat clip, makes for a potent salvo; that energy continues onto the second track, "Dart Persuasion", which pairs rabid drumming with another nice central repetition that would fit well in a manifesto: "For all the tragic scars of your past/ You pointed out/ With an eye pinned to your navel/ Should I be shocked to the core/ By your rigmarole/ Your snivelling narration."
"Lost Weight, Perfect Skin" possesses a plastic surgery metaphor that comes across as ponderous, but it possesses enough fire to match the sarcastic, cutting sentiments within: "Lost weight, perfect skin/ Will bring the torment to an end/ Put the smile back on my lips." The album's first single, "Soft Option", is another good example of Lower in the zone, bringing in Morrissey-like background vocals with serrated guitars.
Elsewhere, Seek can drag in a way that this kind of music shouldn't. "Unkempt, Uncaring" echoes its title in its loose construction and doesn't leave much of impression; elsewhere, the grand cacophony of "Bastard Tactics" and "Craver" don't amount to much more than that clatter. That said, even in Seek Warmer Climes' less impactful tracks, there are glimmering moments, and it's a testement to Lower that it's hard to discount any of the songs in their entirety.
Befitting such a curious band, the best song on Seek Warmer Climes is the longest, and the one that features accompaniment by two cellos. The 7-minute "Expanding Horizons (Dar es Salaam)" is about Toubro traveling to Tanzani in 2009 to work at an orphanage and finding that the religiousness of the place conflicted with his own change-the-world idealism. He left, moved around Africa, was almost kidnapped in Dar Es Salaam, and so on. "Expanding Horizons" opens with him singing, "Here I stand/ On foreign land/ Expanding horizons/ Though nothing seems to match my fantasies/ I'm living a dream", and the song itself offers the spaciousness of travel. It's patient, open, and the build feels earned. When he repeats "caress yourself" a few dozen times toward the end, you want him to keep going with that brief, very effective phrase.
It may not be fair, but it feels necessary regardless to acknowledge that fellow Danish punks, and associates, Iceage have cast a large shadow that all young Danish punk bands are measured against. That group's 2011 debut New Brigade still feels like the perfect encapsulation of the scene's overall aesthetic, and Lower strike me as the other Danish group from that scene who have it in them to reach those heights. Toubro has said that "every song on [Seek Warmer Climes] deals in some way with personal development, be it emotional or cosmetic. How to act in different social contexts, and to acclimatize oneself into a given situation without losing face." With that in mind, the occasional sense of compositional confusion makes sense: even if it doesn't always result in a thrilling listen, Seek Warmer Climes captures a promising band in transition.
