Half of a pair of conceptually related discs released simultaneously,
Okay's
Low Road is, as the title suggests, considerably darker than the comparatively sunny (but still often unsettling)
High Road. During the period in which
Low Road was written and recorded,
Okay's
Marty Anderson (the band's only permanent member, although as on
High Road, there are guest musicians here) was diagnosed with and nearly died from complications of the inflammatory bowel syndrome Crohn's Disease. On top of this, his girlfriend dumped him for one of his bandmates and the Iraq war started. So there's a pervasive gloom to
Low Road, as song titles like "Bloody" and "Holy War" attest, and the fatalism of songs like "We" ("We're Number One/How low will we go?") and "Devil" ("We're killing you/Just like we're killing me") is only barely ameliorated by
Anderson's facility for catchy indie pop hooks. Even more so than on
High Road,
Anderson manipulates his vocal tracks on
Low Road with effects and processing that turn his voice (already a rather odd instrument with a pinched, nasal quality) into a slightly creepy, needling presence, but on songs like "Replace," which mutates the spiritual "Amazing Grace" into a gloomy dirge, it makes quite a bit more lyrical and thematic sense. Unlike the comparatively strained and self-consciously quirky
High Road,
Low Road sounds more personal and intimate, and it's arguably the better album of the two. ~ Stewart Mason