Low

Listening to Low's new album, "Things We Lost in the Fire," it's easy to imagine what next week's gig in Harajuku will be like: They'll be sitting on stools, wearing sensible gray sweaters and won't be smiling much.

Low is an apt moniker. This minimalist Minnesota trio's sparse guitar sound is so lo-fi that you need a hearing aid to hear most of it and they sound as down as a depressive who's returned home to find his wife has run off with another woman -- and taken the dog, too.

You can't get much lower than Low. If you want to kill yourself, buy this record and stick it in a Discman and you'll have no trouble jumping in front of that rush-hour train. Low is music to die to. And you can't pay a band a higher compliment than that.

"Things We Lost in the Fire" starts off rather sprightly with "Sunflower" and "Dinosaur Act," sublime folksy songs that could have come off the last Mercury Rev record, but then the Prozac runs out. "Medicine Magazines" is like Neil Young's "Harvest" at 16 rpm and surely it can't get much slower than this. You kidding? Next track "Laser Beam" sounds like Low have pumped each other with a sackful of heroin before plunging headfirst into a flotation tank. And that's where they stay for the rest of a sadistically melancholic -- though beautiful -- album.

There are snatches of mirth in lyrics like "I fell down the stairs/I wished I was dead" and some solace is offered in last track "Don't Carry It All," but by then your wrists have probably sprung leaks and the tatami's turning red.

As for the live show, Low -- two of whom are Mormons -- will not be a bundle of laughs. But something likely to be so self-indulgently melodramatic and moody could be edifying. Probably. At any rate, stay well clear of the edge of the station platform on the way home.