Things We Lost in the Fire by Low

Things We Lost in the Fire, Low's fifth studio album, came out on Kranky on January 22, 2001, and it finds the Duluth trio at their most hushed and most gripping. Steve Albini engineered it at Electrical Audio in Chicago, and the sound is bare and close: Alan Sparhawk's guitar, Mimi Parker's drums and Zak Sally's bass sit right in the room with you, while the husband-and-wife harmonies drift over tempos so slow they seem to hold their breath.

This is slowcore brushing up against dream pop, lovely and dark in equal measure, and "Dinosaur Act" is where it bares some teeth. Critics fell hard for it: Metacritic's tally came to 87 out of 100, and Pitchfork later placed it at number 117 among the best albums of the 2000s. The vinyl spread it over three sides, with the lyrics etched into the fourth.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.