Duluth trio Low has always been a remarkable and unusual band, so it makes perfect sense that the new documentary “Cue the Strings: A Film About Low” is also both remarkable and unusual.
The film is screening Friday and Saturday at Minneapolis’ Main Cinema as part of the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival.
As expected, “Cue the Strings” is not a traditional documentary. Instead, it’s a series of Low’s music videos pieced together with concert and backstage footage and other outtakes to create a sort of cinematic tone poem that traces the band’s nearly three-decade career.
Local director Phil Harder — who will join Low’s Alan Sparhawk for post-screening Q&A sessions — was able to create the film thanks to a relationship he’s had with the band since the very start.
“Cue the Strings” opens with footage from Low’s first music video, for “Words,” which they shot on a frozen Lake Superior with Harder and a 16mm camera. Harder, Sparhawk and his late wife, drummer Mimi Parker, are shown reminiscing about the 30-below wind chill, how the camera kept freezing up and when Sparhawk slipped on the ice and suffered from a concussion.
The video itself, below, remains haunting and attention-grabbing to this day and looks like it could have been shot in 2023, 1993 or even 1943.
From there, Harder tells the story of Sparhawk and Parker’s relationship through vivid images and Low’s music. The couple — who have employed a series of bassists over the years — famously began by playing very quiet and very slow songs with Sparhawk’s gentle guitar lines accented by Parker’s unique set up of a single snare drum, single cymbal and single floor tom.
Like many other underground rock bands in the post-Nirvana ’90s, Low landed a contract through Virgin Records, despite the group’s decidedly uncommercial sound. The trio seemingly peaked with their third album, 1996’s “The Curtain Hits the Cast,” a gorgeous collection of songs topped off by the single “Over the Ocean,” the group’s first to get some serious attention. (In 2013, Low shocked a Rock the Garden crowd when they spent their entire set playing an extended version of the album track “Do You Know How to Waltz?”)
But Low’s sales weren’t enough for Virgin, who dropped them. Often, that would lead to the end of a young band, but Low not only kept going, they kept getting better — and louder and weirder. Sparhawk and Parker continued to experiment with Low’s sound and eventually added electronic sounds to the mix.
Harder, who shot more than a dozen Low videos over the years, captures Sparhawk and Parker growing from fresh-faced youngsters to mature adult parents of two children, Hollis and Cyrus, who can be seen occasionally popping into the frame in “Cue the Strings.”
The footage suggests the pair not only love each other, they genuinely like each other, too. By and large the music they made together was moody and serious, but they weren’t afraid to have fun, too, as is evidenced by the live shots from a 1998 show when the band dressed up as the legendary punk band the Misfits.
Another aspect of Low that becomes much more clear when watching “Cue the Strings” is just how important Parker was to the band’s sound. Her chillingly beautiful vocal harmonies with Sparhawk ring throughout the film.
“Cue the Strings” doesn’t directly address Parker’s death. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2020 and began treatment the following year. She publicly revealed the diagnosis in early 2022 and Low was forced to cancel some European shows that summer and drop off as the opening act for Death Cab for Cutie in the States. Parker died on Nov. 5, 2022.
The film ends with footage from Low’s final concert last September at Duluth’s Water Is Life Festival. Sparhawk and Parker are shown closing the show with “I Can Wait” and singing the lyrics together: “Just get me out of the way, somebody else take the stage.” It’s a powerful, emotional way to end the film, which will leave fans with both a smile and a lump in their throat.
‘Cue the Strings: A Film About Low’
- When: 7:10 p.m. Friday and 4:20 p.m. Saturday
- Where: Main Cinema, 115 S.E. Main St., Minneapolis
- Tickets: $15 via mspfilm.org
