Low Skies

All The Love I Could Find

[3/5] If you’re not careful, Chicago’s Low Skies just might depress the fuck out of you. The band’s second full-length, All The Love I Could Find, is a collection of sad, slow songs about lost love, vagrancy, house fires, drug abuse, dead people, Nebraska and a bunch of other totally dismal shit too dreary to mention. “We found love, but we lost the war,” singer/guitarist Chris Salveter moans like a (less macho and/or drunk) modern-day Ernest Hemingway on “Sweet Young Girls,” while his bandmates conjure a whole lot of celestial joylessness via weeping guitars and a profound appreciation for wide-open spaces. It’s rarefied air up there, all right–not unlike the various heartland atmospheres of Lucero, My Morning Jacket and the Black Heart Procession. But, like, way more of a bummer.
(FLAMESHOVEL) J. Bennett