If singer Adrian Toubro had something important to say on Lower's debut EP Walk on Heads, the rest of the band sure did their best to stop anybody from hearing it. The louder he shouted, the harder the band roared back, drowning his words under sheets of blistering squall. Like their Danish neighbors Iceage, however, Lower's overheated punk has cooled down considerably as their scope has expanded. By last year's full-length Seek Warmer Climes, which favored post-punk's slow crawl over hardcore's speed-trial tempos, the singer was no longer locked in bloody competition against the rest of the band. Lower's latest EP I'm a Lazy Son…But I'm the Only Son cements their new pecking order: Now Toubro's voice leads and everything else follows.
That voice has earned its place at the front of the mix. It's the band's strongest instrument, and it's never been more expressive than it is on these five songs. On opener "At the Endless Party", he croons "Come on sweetheart, take me as I am/ Drag me to your chamber and toss me around," pulling at the word "sweetheart" until it becomes an accusation. It's the delivery of a desperate man trying to preserve his dignity in the face of dire need. "We'll never connect; there's no way around it," he mourns. He's not the first guy to sing about using sex to numb the pain, but he may be the first to make the pain sound like the better alternative.
"Endless Party" introduces the latest evolution in the band's sound, which undergoes a logical shift from post-punk to goth—specifically the booming goth rock of the '80s, when acts like Sisters of Mercy and the Cure recorded in what sounded like cobwebbed dungeons that had been improbably outfitted with high-end studios. The stark, churning bassline of "Keep Me in Mind" lurches as if it's weighed down by frost. Lower's commitment to goth's pervasive dreariness is impressive, though as Only Son's unhurried closer "Nasty Business" crawls past the six-minute mark it's hard not to pine a little for the speed and brevity of their punk output. The band makes an effort to fill in the track's creaky expanses, coloring it with sober pianos and echoes of muted horns, but really, this is Toubro's show, and it's his poetry of sorrow that drives the EP. "I deserve something more," he broods, "So much given, nothing given in return." On song after song, Toubro defends his own honor, demanding to be heard. And he is.
